THE ELEMENTS 

OP 

MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 

DESIGNED AS A 

BASIS OF EDUCATION FOR MODERN SOCIETY; 

A Work indispeiuable to its security and progress ; 

SPECIALLY ADDRESSED TO THE 

American People to aid in tlie compreliension and practice 
of rational morality upon wliicli tlieir Republic reposes. 



By THEUVENOT, Professor. 



Homo 8um : humani nibil a me alienum ^vXo.— Terence. 
I am a man ; and I think nothing pertaining to man undeserving of my regard. 

It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular 
government. — Farewell Address of Washington. 



NEW YORK : 
J. F. WARNEE, PRINTER, 

156 CENTRE STREET. 
1866. 



dEanitrstune 

FOR THE 

FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN UNION, 

REDEEMED, REGENERATED AND DISINTHRALLED. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 18G6, by 
V. THE!) raNOT, 
In the Clerk's Office of the United States District Court for the Southern Dis- 
trict of New York. 



TO THE CITIZENS' ASSOCIATIO]JT. 



" WoEK is king. Politicians shall rule ns no longer. Help 
us to save our city. The Citizens' Association proposes to 
carry power back to the people, and enable them to select their 
own candidates, whom they know to be honest and capable." — 
Mass Meeting of the Iron Trade^ at Cooler Institute^ July 28, 
1864. 

These words, exposed to the public in capital letters for seve- 
ral months in the Union Hall contain an admission that the 
people of the great American Republic have lost a strong por- 
tion of their vitality and power of self-government ; they are 
pressed by outside influeuce. 

Tlie Citizens' Association has a praiseworthy object. But it 
is as difficult to cure the moral as the physical diseases of the 
heart of man, when he is advanced in years. Precisely as the 
physician who will attempt to prolong the life and existence of 
one who is attacked by consumption, thus we must aim to 
preserve the life of the nation under its present afflictions. 
Complete health cannot be restored, except by the young gene- 
ration. It is upon them that we must act. "What is necessary 
to be done ? 

Society has changed its social basis. In society, as hitherto 
organized, all ideas of duty were taken from a direct revelation 
of God, and the clergy were the constituted conservators of 
private and social morality. The sovereign was considered as the 
representative of divinity, and his wishes were deemed the infal- 
lible law which determined national morality. Ecclesiastical and 
temporary power were closely allied, when not a unity. Tlie 
populations were immured, as we at present still witness in China, 
in Turkey, etc., and strangers were condemned and excluded; 
and by these means every attempt was made to prevent the 
ruinous influence of diflerences of religious opinion. 

Under this system society moved for centuries. A minority 
of its members reaped the advantages, and the majority liad for 
its lot toil, penury and misery. 



IHE ELEMENTS 

OF 

MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 

DESIGNED AS A 

BASIS OF EDUCATION FOR MODERN SOCIETY; 

A Work indispeiuable to its security and progress ; 

SPECIALLY ADDEESSED TO THE 

American People to aid in tlie compreliengion and practice 
of rational morality upon wliicli tlieir Republic reposes. 

By V. THBUVENOT, Professor. 

\ 

Homo sum : humani nihil a me alienum ^^ysXo.— Terence. 
I am a man ; and I think nothing pertaining to man undeserving of my regard. 

It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular 
government. — Fareioell Address of Washiiigton, 



jS^EW YORK : 
J. F. WARNER, PRINTER, 

156 CENTRE STREET. 
1866. 



Cunicrstont 

FOR THE 

FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN UNION, 

REDEEMED, REGENERATED AND DISINTHRALLED. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 18G6, by 
V. THEt VENOT, 
In the Clerk'3 Office of the United States District Court for the Southern Dis- 
trict of j^s ew York. 



TO THE CITIZENS' ASSOCIxiTIOlT. 



"WoEK is king. Politicians shall rule us no longer. Help 
us to save our city. The Citizens' Association proposes to 
carry power hack to the people, and enable them to select their 
own candidates, whom they know to be honest and capable." — 
Mass Meeting of the Iron Trade ^ at Cooler Institute^ July 28, 
1864. 

These words, exposed to the public in capital letters for seve- 
ral months in the Union Hall, contain an admission that the 
people of the great American Eepublic have lost a strong por- 
tion of their vitality and power of self-government ; they are 
pressed by outside influence. 

Tlie Citizens' Association has a praiseworthy object. But it 
is as difficult to cure the moral as the physical diseases of the 
heart of man, when he is advanced in years. Precisely as the 
physician who will attempt to prolong the life and existence of 
one who is attacked by consumption, thus we must aim to 
preserve the life of the nation under its present atflictions. 
Complete health cannot be restored, except by the young gene- 
ration. It is upon them that we must act. "What is necessary 
to be done ? 

Society has changed its social basis. In society, as hitherto 
organized, all ideas of duty were taken from a direct revelation 
of God, and the clergy were the constituted conservators of 
private and social morality. The sovereign was considered as the 
representative of divinity, and his wishes were deemed the infal- 
lible law which determined national morality. Ecclesiastical and 
temporary power were closely allied, when not a unity. The 
populations were immured, as we at present still w^itness in China, 
in Turkey, etc., and strangers were condemned and excluded; 
and by these means every attempt was made to prevent the 
ruinous influence of differences of religious oi)inion. 

Under this system society moved for centuries. A minority 
of its members reaped the advantages, and the majority had for 
its lot toil, penury and misery. 



4 



In the midst of sucli a state of affiairs, thinkers have come 
forward and showed to mankind the fall meaning and import of 
the doctrine of the natural laws (already mentioned in the 
Sacred Writin,a^s), and proved that their object and design were 
to render for all the members of the general system their ut- 
most perfection and happiness ; that God himself submitted to 
these laws, upon which he impressed his decree, which was but 
partially manifested in the Bible to subserve the interests of 
life, and that the wicked, w^ho governed the world, have artifi- 
cially clouded their light which they feared ; that they also prosti- 
tuted the true spirit of revelation to maintain themselves in their 
privileges, their laziness, their usurpations, and their injustice. 

Eoger TVilliams, as early as 1636, caused tlie admission of the 
doctrine that the political constitution of Ehode Island was 
founded exclusively upon a general principle of human inte- 
rests, without regard to revelation. Later, in western Europe, 
church and state were separated, and constitutional government 
established. Italy will complete that divorce by suppressing 
the temporal poAver of the Pope. The rights of conscience are 
recognized everywhere. Washington and his noble band of 
co-laborers, to their everlasting honor, have placed boldly and 
flatly America, as human society and national association, upon 
the footing of moral philosophy; have determined that thence- 
forward man. would use his reasoning faculties implanted in 
him by God, to find his temporal happiness in the great book 
of nature. 

Moral philosophy has thus become the basis of modern 
society. Eevealed religion has simply become an aid to the 
development of morality, the conflicting and contradictory doc- 
trines of churches rendering this inevitable, particularly since 
under the dictation of moral philosophy they agreed upon 
mutual tolerance, thus acknowledging the supremacy of the 
former. Doubtless therein lies the secret of the difliculties of 
our period, and the sombre darkness which envelopes Europe 
and America. 

A seed planted in a fertile and well-tilled soil, results in a 
rich vegetation, but which soon withers if subsequent cultiva- 
tion is neglected. This is more particularly applicable to the 
United States. After three-quarters of a century of unparal- 
leled political and material success, and in connection even of 
this prosperity, we perceive the antipathy of races and religious 
sects, brutality and ignorance of the lower classes, degradation 
in private conduct, rascalities of all kinds, daily incendiarisms, 
terrible riots, which bring us face to face with anarchy, and the 
nation divided into two hostile camps, destroying and mutilat- 



5 



ing each other in a cruel war. All this arises hecanse the moral 
sense of the popular masses is ohliterated and perverted, and 
because the same care with wliich the moral sense was culti- 
vated upon the ancient basis of society is not expended in the 
new social order. The sentiment of national duty has become 
so feeble and so low, that even now the nation is incapable of 
so simple, so natural, so reasonable, so elementary a thing as 
electing as its governors capable and honest men ! 

All honors to the Citizens' Association! It is, if true to its 
motto, the heart of the nation, from which will How a healthier 
blood to its sick members. But will it listen to our advice? 
Will it understand the care and attention requisite in forming 
the mind of the young to individual, social and national life? 
Will it understand the necessity of cultivating thoroughly the 
moral sense of the community? After the victory of the 
northern arms, America's wounds will be healed by these 
means, and she will once more become the hope of oppressed 
spirits the world over. 

A celebrated French author has said that, in the present 
phase of society, not cannon^^nt instructors, are masters of 
the world, by virtue of their position as dispensers of science 
and ministers of reason. If so, give to the instructor the power 
to fulhl his mission. His instruction must both be moralizing 
and civilizing in its influence. That primary instruction shall 
be a vigorous introduction to all the branches of human moral- 
ity. It is necessary that he should have in his hands works 
prepared for these purposes. 

"While so many Americans, unworthy of the name, have 
plotted for the destruction of their country, I have employed 
my time, alone, isolated, and a stranger, for the past five years, 
and devoted thereto all my pecuniary resources to solve the 
i-)roblem of its salvation by means of education. I have just 
/iublished this work on individual morality (the rights and 
duties of man to himself), and on social morality (which means 
the rights and duties of man to his neighbors), treated as a 
science, and as a foundation for private and social manners, 
which is the pioneer for a correlative work on the rights and 
duties of citizen, of which the first chapters are already writ- 
ten. It is, in one word, the key of a system which will exer- 
cise a powerful influence upon the moral education of the 
world, and will do much towards advancing man to full devel- 
opment, and man will then, with gigantic steps, break obsta- 
cles like straw, crush, as vicious reptiles, the slaveholders, the 
politicians, his oppressors of every description, opposing his 
destiny. 



6 



Iti conclusion, 1 dedicate mj book to the Citizens^ Associa- 
tion, and solicit its intellectual and material patronage and 
support in the great efforts of mj idea^ saying simply : It is 
lii vain that the Citizens' Association contemplates and aims at 
a political reform^ if previously an individual and social reform 
he not effected. Reform in the individual, social and political 
manners, and general progress! The signs of the times loudly 
warn the peojtles that for them not to advance is to recede." 

I dedicate it, especially, to its venerable member, Mr. Peter 
Cooper, who will eagerly avail himself of a providential oppor- 
tunity for putting in his Institute for the Advancement of 
Science and Art, in the rank which it deserves, the first of sciences 
—thus far stationary and too much neglected, and without wiiich 
modern civilization would soon crumble to pieces — ^giving thus 
the example of its inauguration throughout the New World* 



INTRODUCTION. 



Moral instruction, the object of which is to make duty 
known, to awaken and develop a regard for it among the rising 
generation, and thus to establish the moral habits of nations, is 
one of the most important branches of public instruction. 

Morality, as a system of revealed duty, is the concern of the 
clergy ; considered from a purely philosophic and rational point 
of view, it is the business of the teacher. The priest, in all 
religions, performs his task, and the young receive from him 
the most satisfactory care. The same cannot be said of the lay 
teacher, who seems to have abjured the noblest of his functions, 
as the use of our energies is inseparable from them in their 
training. 

In fact, if it were proposed to enable his pupil to read the 
law where it is above all most visible — in nature and the works 
of G-od — and in that panorama to point out to him his multifa- 
rious duties to himself and others, which in the Decalogue are 
too briefly stated, the lay teacher would be speechless. This 
incapacity on the part of teachers, as a body, which is univer- 
sally admitted, is the more to be regretted as it leaves the 
moral sense — the faculty of distinguishing between virtuous 
and criminal actions — in a state of weakness highly prejudicial 
to human welfare. 

If this is, unfortunately, true, it is also true that they who 
make teaching their vocation, do not deserve the reproach of 
it ; hitherto they have had no elementary work in which the 
eternal principles of morality were exhibited as a scientific 
whole, in such a way as to meet the wants of all minds, with- 
out regard to race, nationality, creed, or condition, being to mo- 
rality, for example, what primary grammar has been to language. 

But this book is no longer a desideratum ; it is to be found 
essentially in the work here olfered to the public. It will be 
seen that from the fruitful field of natural law, hitherto so ill- 
explored, the writer has succeeded in deriving a scheme of from 



8 



seven to eight thousand duties, which man owes to himself and 
to his fellows, demonstrated like geometrical theorems, and the 
performance of which satisfies as manj interests. Long reflec- 
tion warrants him in asserting, that if it were to become a 
classic, it would be to the moral interests of society what 
modern discoveries have proved to its physical interests. 

In an outline of general morality, he clearly indicates what 
education in Europe and America should be, not only to en- 
courage their ascending progress, but also to preserve them 
from the perils that menace their incomplete civilization — that 
is — a thorough introduction and vigorous impulse in all branches 
of morality. 



9 



Can any one misunderstand the importance which attaches 
to moral instruction? The man destitute of all moral cul- 
ture whatever is unable to emerge from his native nakedness, 
misery and abjectness, perverse in his capacities, and often 
worse than the ferocious animals. 

To this question, in the midst of human society appertain 
thefts, arsons, assassinations, drunkenness, debauchery, surly 
temper, greediness and cupidity, avarice, uncleanliness, wild 
outcries, slander and denunciation, perfidy and treason, bicker- 
ings and quarrelings, lying and hypocrisy, cheating, suicide, 
piracy, duelling, sanguinary appetites, atrocious vengeance ; 
wanton slaughter by brute natures, who sneer at their victims, 
and can take their repast tranquilly sitting upon their corpses ; 
libertinism, adultery, abduction and rape, parricides, infanti- 
cides, poisonings, abortion, torture, kidnapping, devastations 
and vandalism; the pride of tyrants, who enforce adoration 
and build towers with heads of the dead, incarceration, slavery, 
promiscuity, bloody shows, human sacrifices, cannibalism, etc», 
etc. ; immense conservative expenses against human wolves — 
oceans of money which are transformed into police, judges, 
executioners, prisons, galleys, scaflPolds, ramparts, fortresses, 
muskets, cannon, swords, armies— rivers of blood shed on the 
battle-fields! 

Would it not be preferable to tame, to tutor them, those 
human wolves, when little and weak, by a powerful system of 
moral education, than to have to protect one's self against their 
claws and teeth, when grown big and strong ? 

Moral instruction — theme of all crimes and virtues — a matter 
whose gravity increases in view of the history of man's heart, 
which indicates the sound and upright principles that never 
may be effaced when deeply inculcated in youth, and presents 
the adult person engaged in his disorderly way, who lollows it 
to the abyss. 

Moral education — glorious and difficult task. The child is 
full of defects. He is dull and slow m understanding. He is, 
in his active faculties, restive, refusing to acquiesce in the voice 
of duty ; he is awkward and unskilful in all he undertakes, 
committing a multitude of faults, which are as many buds of 



10 

his future conduct. Moral science, richly created, and adapted, 
as it is in this book, to assist religion by reason, will, beyond 
doubt, not be acquired without pain ; but, has not G-od ordained 
that we should acquire everything by pain and labor, virtuous 
dispositions included ? Let every body be animated by the 
grandeur of the result, which will be — the great arterial way 
of life better lighted, and society impressed with a more normal 
march — a pledge secured of better times. 



THE 



ELEMENTS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 



GENERAL THEORY OF DUTY. 

1. The object of moral science, or ethics, is to determine 
what is good and bad for intelligent and free beings, and their 
obligations respecting the same. 

2. All that exists in substance and the states of being of sub- 
stance. These two things are essentially united. Substance is 
that which exists of itself, and has no need of a subject in 
which it may inhere. The state or mode of being always re- 
quires a subject in which it may inhere. 

The modes of being take the different names of configuration, 
disposition, manner, fashion, figure, form, modality, modifica- 
tion, property, bearing, situation, relation, etc. 

3. Modes of being are good, bad, or indifferent. One of these 
three characteristics is found in every modality. 

4. Good modalities constitute the good, the beautiful, the 
handsome, the graceful, the comely, the pretty ; the bad con- 
stitute the evil, the ill, the ugly, the homely : the indifferent 
are neither good nor bad. 

When we see a meadow enamelled with flowers, a theatrical 
fairy-scene, a display of fireworks, we exclaim, How beautiful 
that is !" If you are in the presence of a human face consumed 
by a cancer, or if you see a leprosy, you say, What an evil !" 
A block of marble just from the quarry, is neither good nor 
evil ; it is shapeless. 

5. Different shades of good are indicated by the words 
quality, order, perfection, concert, symmetry. The words 
gross, odd, uncouth, comical, abject, burlesque, grotesque, ridi- 
culous, anomaly, disorder, vice, deformity, defect, chaos, con- 
fusion, etc, represent the different shades of evil. A dilapidated 
and wretched condition. An indifferent thing is called a trifle, 
child's play, frivolity, puerility, futility, nothing, etc. 



12 



6. The number of modalities as well as that of objects is un- 
known to lis. Good and evil have degrees indefinite in number. 
The good carried to a high degree or to the highest degree is 
the nice, the elegant, the delicate, the fine, the exquisite, the 
excellent, the precious, the pure, the superlb, the magnificent, 
the noble, the majestic, the sublime. The bad carried to the 
highest degree constitutes tbe low, the vile, the impure, the 
ignoble, the hideous, the monstrous, the frightful, the horrible. 

The modality of relation deserves a remark. It exists for 
two or several objects, or for one object and some form, of 
proximity, separation, union, tie or vicinage. There is an evil 
of relation wlien the situation of things is not suitable. Ex- 
ample : A hovel in the court of the Louvre, a cashmere shawl 
worth 3,000 dollars over the rags of a mendicant. A whole com- 
pounded of elements without affinity, congruity, conformity is 
said to be disproportioned, discordant, inharmonious, heteroge- 
neous, incongruous. There is a good of relation when the situ- 
ation is suitable : two pieces of mahogany furniture opposite 
each other ; a shawl of 5,000 dollars on the shoulders of a queen. 
A whole of kindred, similar elements is homogeneous, propor- 
tionate, concordant, harmonic. 

8. An evil may be the cause, or the occasion, or the conse- 
quence of a good. It will be regarded as good, if the good tha^ 
attends it is abundantly sufificient to conceal and absorb it. ll 
I dig a pit fifteen feet deep in my garden, and I find a treasure, 
it is evident that the trouble I take will be for me a good 
through the delights by which it will be followed. 

9. A good may be the cause, the occasion, the consequence 
of an evil. It will be regarded as an evil if the evil outweighs 
it, if, as it is said, the pain is superior to the pleasure. A man 
is very fond of cherry-brandy ; but hardly has he drunk of it 
that he is seized witli a violent colic. The delight experienced 
by his palate may pass for a tme evil. 

An indifferent modality is good and evil in the same con- 
ditions. 

10. A modality may be destroyed in an object without being 
replaced by another. When the sense of smell is brought into 
contact with the smoke of incense, the soul receives an agree- 
able sensation. When the contact ceases the sensation ceases, 
and the soul returns again to the same state as before. One 
modality may be destroyed to be replaced by a good, a bad, or 
an indilferent one. The bronze statue of Kapoleon on the Ven- 
dome column, may, after losing the form of the emperor take 
that of Alexander, of iEsop, or return to its unwrought state. 
This always reference to material objects. 



13 



11. There are modalities that iniitnally exchide each other. 
White excludes black, warm excludes cold. The presence of 
one proves the absence of the other. 

12 Modalities are simple or compound. The modality 
roundness is simple; the modality tree is compound. Every 
object in nature consists of a substance and a certain sum of ' 
modalities. The sum of modalities without which an individual 
can neither exist, nor be conceived, is called nature, tlie essence 
of the individual. When an object unites all the good qualities 
of which it is susceptible, it is called perfect, finished. Every 
nature that is not perfect does not exist in all its integrity. A 
modality, even simple, can exist only in part ; such is a circle 
commenced, a bridge begun, and likewise be destroyed only in 
part. 

13. Evil is repugnant to beings, and particularly to our na- 
ture, and they struggle with each other like fire and water. 
The cure of a malady is nothing else than the efibrt of the phy- 
sical nature to repel a foreign element, to reconquer the healthy 
state which it claims back again. Evil is in antipathy with our 
minds by its repulsive aspect. Why this shame to appear in 
public with a scar or a chancre on the face? Who goes to in- 
habit the crypts and catacombs ? It is repugnant to the heart. 
Who can endure the terrible sensations of devouring hunger, of 
burning thirst, of scorching fire, of torture, of poisoning, etc., 
which derange the physical constitution iiself ? 

14. Good, whether actual or possible, on the contrary, suits 
our nature and belongs to it. Does not the little child lay hold 
of the new doll, and cast away the old snub-nosed, dirty and 
ragged one ? Why does the ear readily attend to harmonious 
sounds ? Why this delight in fine clothes, fine apartments and 
fine gardens ? Whence comes that harmony in the features of 
a man inspired with happy emotions ? Every fiber in our 
being aspires to happinesSj and the loss of it afflicts us. Happi- 
ness belongs to it, because it is an emanation, ^an image of God, 
who possesses all perfection, and cannot be a powerless artist. 

15. Among the attributes, of our nature exists a free and 
powerful activity capable of causing upon it, interiorly and ex- 
teriorly, in our fellows, in animals and inanimate objects, num- 
berless efi'ects creative and destructive of their modes of ex- 
istence, of their forms, their qualities. Is this formidable spring 
of action to be without restraint and without rule, when the 
ocean is destined to be confined in its bed without overpassing 
the bank ^hat reaches its level, when the planet is forced to keep 
to its ellipse, magnetism to follow its needle, and the locomotive 
its rail ? Who shall dare affirm it ? 



14 



16. Tiie destiny that affects tlie whole necessarily affects the 
part. If the human personality is destined to happiness, the 
sum of the perfections of which it is susceptible, as happiness 
is destined for it, its activity is necessarily destined to the acts 
suitable to that end, as those same acts are destined to serve it for 
aliment and exercise. Those acts are the effects of the creation 
and preservation of the condition of good and perfection, and 
the effects of the destruction and prevention of the conditions 
that constitute our ills. In other words, such effects, for the 
acting principle are to be produced, soliciting from it their ex- 
ecution — it has to realize them. These relations of adaptation, 
and mutual destination between cause and effect, of right over 
the effect in the agent, which are naught else than the ends of 
the Creator, who has desired that man should be the fashioner 
of his own destiny, of his own fate, constitute the law of nature. 
The agent is bound to the*act by these relations, this law. The 
fact of being bound, held, joined, attached to such and such acts, 
constitutes duty. 

IT. 'We are then bound to acts in reference to the good and 
evil that attach to our humanity, to the entire system of intel- 
ligent beings. But we conceive that there are in regard to the 
former, acts of destruction and prevention, and in regard to the 
latter, acts of production and preservation. These others being 
the contrary of those we have characterized, and their omission 
having the same tendency, there follows in regard to them the 
duties of abstinence. In other words, those acts are repugnant 
to the active principle, as being contrary to its destiny, as 
being an indigestible aliment for its exercise ; they solicit from 
it their non production — it has not to produce them. Har- 
mony, affinity, sympathy, fitness, then declare themselves be- 
tween it and their omission, and bind them to one another. 

18. Let us more explicitly exhibit, by formulas and examples, 
duties as resting on their immovable foundation, natural laws. 
(Moral good, moral evil in this book signify good and evil as 
peculiar or relating to intelligences.) 

ACTIVE DUTIES. 

Peopositiox I. 

19. Man ought to create the moral good that does not exist. 
For example : He should make himself joyous, learned, agile, 

skijful, robust, clothe himself well. 

Peoposition" II. 

20. Man should prevent the destruction of the good that exists. 



15 



You get out of tlie way to let a carnage pass, you flee at the 
approach of a locomotive, of ferocious animal coming toward 
you. "We pull down a house to stop the progress of a fire. We 
hasten, on the coming of a storm, to put cattle, crops, and all 
damageable objects under shelter, where we prudently remain 
(Ourselves, The gardener removes from his trees, from his 
vegetables the insects that will devour them. The conservative 
action of the good is, as it were, a second creation of it. 

PEOPOSITION III. 

21. Man should destroy the evil that exists. 

He who is sick goes in quest of a physician. I carry to the 
hatter my dirty or crumpled hat, to the tailor my torn coat, to 
the gun-smith my greasy or rusty gun, etc. We sweep our 
houses. The city cleans its streets. 

Proposition IV. 

22. Man ought to prevent the creation of evil. 

To prevent tlie happening of an evil is to destroy it for the 
future. This act is the same as the foregoing. The child 
draws back its hands from the correcting ferula. An animal, 
when mad, is killed, that it may not communicate its madness. 
Quarantines are established in sea-ports to prevent the spread 
of pestilence from passengers. Principiis ohnta — oppose be- 
ginnings, is an old dictum of wisdom, which sanctions the duty 
of repelling evil at once, both where it is and where as yet it 
is not. 

NEGATIVE DUTIES. 

Peoposition Y. 

28. Man ought not to destroy moral good. 

To create the good supposes its non-destruction. To be 
bound to produce good is evidently to be bound not to destroy 
it when it exists. An act is equivalent in value — to the ex- 
istence of the good. Non action is equivalent in value — to the 
existence of the good. Now, two values equal to a third, are 
equal to one another. (Proposition 1.) 

Do not destroy your fine clock, your beautiful carriage. Do 
not splash the mud over that elegant lady. Do not turn your 
cattle into that magnificent garden, among these fine legumin- 
ous plants, these fine flowers, over that verdant mead. Do not 
burn your golden harvests. Do not pillage those precious 
articles which you see in those splendid stores. Do not mutilate 
those majestical statues, those gorgeous monuments. Do not 
daub those rich pictures. Do not break those brilliant gas lamps. 



16 



Peoposition YI. 

24. Man ought not to prevent the creation of the good. 

A good which will happen is a reality in the future. The 
fact of preventing its happening is the same thing as the fact 
of destroying what is at the time being. The 6th proposition 
is as true as the 5th. 

Do not hinder any one from obtaining a good employment, 
from making a lucrative bargain, a fortunate marriage. 

Peoposition YII. 

25. Man ought not to create the bad. 

A man stripped of his clothing by brigands in a forest, then 
fastened to a tree, passes the night in that condition, exposed to 
nakedness, cold, hunger, thirst, gloom, fatigue, fright. A 
traveller had seen him without coming to his deliverance, by 
cutting his cords. We would charge this latter with the seven 
evils suffered by the victim above described, on the strength of 
proposition III. If he has committed a crime by his neglect, 
the former parties committed a still more odious deed by their 
action. 

Peoposition YIII. 

26. Man should not prevent the destruction of the bad. 

The sense of this proposition is easily gathered from these 
cases: A man is likely to be suffocated in five minutes by a 
quinsy. If you retain the physician by force, you will be called 
a malefactor and assassin. Groans from the ground indicate 
that a man has been interred alive. Would not he who should 
oppose an obstacle to his deliverance become responsible before 
God and man for his frightful condition, and be likely to be 
broken by working men and the whole people as an impure 
vessel ? 

This duty is equivalent to that of proposition YII. 
Ppopositiox IX. 

27. Man ought to abstain from acting on indifferent moda- 
lities. 

If we pardon the child for busying itself seriously with its 
kite flying in the air, with its hoop in the street, with its top 
on the floor, such acts in a man offend us, if done for any other 
purpose than as means of arriving at important results^ We 
should regard as a fool him Avho should pass his time in tossing 
pebbles on the bank of a river, or in beating the water. Is 
not ''trifler " a degrading epithet? 



17 



pEOrOSITION X. 

28. Between two evils we should choose the less. 

There are cases when one cannot destroy an evil without 
cansing another, or suffering one to remain. Peter has a violent 
itching on the leg ; if he gets rid of it by scrat-^.hing himself, he 
will cause a sore, and finally a mortification. It is quite plain 
that he ought to bear with the itching. 

'Peoposition XI. 

29. Between two things good w^e should choose the better. 

Peoposition XII. 

80. Between two equal evils, or two things equally good, one 
may take ^vhichever he prefers. 

Peoposition XIII. 

81. Between the indifferent and the evil we should choose 
the indifferent, and between the good and an indifferent thing 
we should choose the good. 

Peoposition XIY. 

82. We should remain passive as respects modalities which 
have no moral quality, steadily refrain from acting upon that 
which for intelligences is neither good nor bad. 

The following are propositions indisputably true : I ought 
not to build two or three houses when one is enough for me." 
*' A king, whatever the amount of his riches, ought not to build 
a city in Spitzbergen, which is inhabitable only for the rein- 
deer and the bear, to serve no living being." The pyramids of 
Egypt are a foolish thing, if they were without utility. The 
cock in the fable may teach us a lesson when he disregarded 
the pearl to seize upon the barleycorn. The human race is 
burdened with obligations sufficiently grave, to be discharged 
in return from any that do not contribute to its advantage. We 
ought, above all, to abstain from the production of evil and the 
destruction of the good, because there would ensue to us by 
such action fatal tastes as regards moral good and evil. Do not 
injure that habitation which has been left uninhabited. Leave 
the thistle, the reed untouched in your pathway. 

Peoposition XY. 

83. The possible is the measure of our obligations. 

A drowning man does not call the inert rock in front of him 
to his assistance, but the hardy fisherman who spreads his nets 
on its surface. The powerless man ceases to be an active prin- 



18 



ciple, and the acts which demand their production are no longer 
addressed to hini. As respects omission, if a man cannot re- 
frain, he yields to an alien impulse, he acts only as instrument, 
he is no longer an active principle, and duty does not attach to 
him. The proverh " Ad imj^ossihle nemo tenetur, Ko one is 
bound to perform the impossible," is then quite true. The 
Greeks having the Lernean hydra to destroy, there was no one 
but Hercules upon whom the law was binding. He who 
knocks down a passer in the street by a fall upon him from 
his own roof, is not amenable by the law : It would be no 
homicide.'' 

34. Corollary First. 
We ought to finish an enterprise begun. 

Corollary Secois-d. 
We ought not to begin a work which cannot be finished. 

Corollary Third. 
We ought not to attempt the impossible. 

35. We have then comprehended the law, and the duty which 
it creates, that is to say, the silent solicitation, that exigency 
addressed from the depths of actions to the general system of 
intelligences to produce or not -to produce them in th'eir interest, 
and the general system of intelligences bound, obligated to pro- 
duce or to omit them by that solicitation, that exigency, that 
demand, which is none other than that of its own interests. 

86. Every law is natural, and natural law binds all intelli- 
gences, men at every age, in every condition, kings, nations, 
princes, God first of all, even animals. Moral laws are inde- 
structible and eternal. If the world were not, they would 
exist in a possible world. During everlasting ages this truth 
will exist. One must aid his unfortunate brother. They are 
incalculable in number, since over a thousand million men 
who cover the globe, from one sun to another, in their acts and 
non-acts only observe or infringe the moral laws. The laws 
made by legislators, in other words, positive laws, divine or 
human, are good only so far as they are the expression, the 
manifestation, the translation, the sketch, the copy of natural 
law: just, wise laws, impious, barbarous laws. The will of the 
legislator is but an accident in the law. If there is law and 
duty because a legislator has said, "I will, I ordain," without a 
rule for his will, he may ordain wrongly and at hap-hazard — 
there are no more tyrants ; kill your children, burn your houses, 
strangle yourselves ; the eff'orts of nations to get rid of their 
oppressive rulers are acts of insubordination and rebellion. 



19 



87. Katiiral la\Y sketches its outline in that uniform body of 
acts and non-acts peculiar to tlie human race in all times and 
in all places. Everywhere (and if any individual make an 
exception in the mass, they are blamed and blame tliemselves) 
walls are raised vertically, floors are laid on a level, houses are 
plastered and whitewashed, the furniture in them is set in 
order, clothes are brushed, shoes are cleaned, linen is mended 
and dried, people wash themselves, clothe themselves, and otFal 
is carried otf. Everywhere productions of art are executed on 
the same model. Everywhere domicils are respected, and the 
persons and property of others; he who falls in the mud is set 
on his feet; he who is in danger of drowning, is drawn from 
the water. Everywhere people run to a fire, stop a frightened 
horse that is running away and is likely to injure the crowd, 
destroy the carriage, and kill himself, etc., etc. Does not such 
a uniformity of acts and omissions among such immense num- 
bers of isolated agents, who have no concert of action, proceed 
from a feeling of things to be done and omitted, which subdues 
them — and do not these things to be done and avoided, impera- 
tive and prohibitive laws, form a body'of realities as precise as 
those which makeup arithmetic and- geometry? Do we not 
say to him who does not apprehend them, You have not the 
intellect to comprehend what must be done; you suifer yourself 
to be directed like a child ; we coiild desire, however, in you 
something else than a machine 

88. The instinct of animals, for which the precepts of posi- 
tive laws are nothing, and which incontestably follow moral 
pei^ceptions, proves the reality of natural law. 

39. It is found in all books of philosophy and theology — and 
the Bible declares that it alone governed the world before the 
Decalogue. It can be misapprehended only by ignorance and 
corruption. Emanative from God, the law is sustained by the 
secret will of God, the master who imposes his task on the 
worker, desiring that he should perform it. 

40. The modalities which constitute the perfection, the nature 
of any object whatever, are the property, the peculiarity of that 
substance. In the same way, the good modalities of an intelli- 
gence, whether it derives them from the Deity, from any being 
whatever, or its operations, are said to appertain to it, to be its 
property, its right, to belong to it, to be iis own. The same is 
true also of the objects by which it is surrounded, which are 
for it a means of performing its duties to its own personality. 
If free activity belongs to us, as one of the highest attributes 
of our nature, its exercise in the sphere of duty is a marvel 
that appertains to us, the performance of the acts assigned to 



20 



it by the law appertains to us, and the results of this perform- 
^nce appertain to us. 

41. AYe have clearly set forth and developed the nature, the 
genesis, the object and subject of duty, Let us now enter into 
the detail of these same obligations. We shall attain tliis end 
by presenting a classification of tlje good and the bad modalities 
of which intelligence are susceptible, and by analyzing them. 
For, we have not to treat of modalities unrelated to them, in 
relation to which we have only negative duties, and which 
would lead us into the abyss of all possible forms of being. We 
shall treat no farther of indilferent modalities — a very obscure 
subject in which we are guided and inspired by a sort of in- 
stinct and spontaniety, rather than by reasoning. Shall our 
list embrace moral modalities in their minutest varieties ? We 
know that all sciences are of indefinite perfectibility^ To de- 
sire to enumerate the modalities of which man may be the 
subject or object, is to seek to number the stars of the firma- 
ment. How many corporeal forms do we behold ! By virtue 
of the laws of configuration, there are no two men, any more 
than two grains of sand, who exactly resemble each other. 
How many modes of being particular to minds I 

42. AVe ought, then, to restrict ourselves to the most impor- 
tant classes. Shall we embrace in our work the essential 
branches of all the principal classes? IsTo. Many groups of 
modalities upon which man has to operate in his own person, 
and in external objects, constitute what are called the arts, 
which are practised only by a limited number of individuals, 
and require a separate instruction and practice. The arts will 
be only indicated. 

43. That which is good and evil in man, considered in his 
relation to the Deity, good and evil in superior intelligences, or 
in relation to them, in a word, religious morality will lie out of 
our scheme. 

44. AYe will give and develop the sections of modalities, those 
classes of duties, which particularly aflect honor and con- 
science, whence emanates merit or demerit, innocence and 
criminality, which constitute morality, properly so-called moral 
restraint, in the common acceptation of the word, and educa- 
tion. ATorality and education will then constitute the subject — 
matter of our work. 

45. In abstracting the religious quality that attaches to some 
few of these classes, from special divine revelation, we desire to 
leave to the clergy their functions in all their purity, which are to 
form religious persons, limiting ourselves to the forming of good 
people and well-educated persons, by giving impression to the 



21 



natural principle, which should act of itself npon every reason- 
able being. 

46. We shall proceed to the investigation of good and evil. 
By setting forth with morality and education, the remaining 
branches of general morality, we shall only bring into clearer 
view, the two former. In the same way, it is easier to examine a 
city seen from an eminence than from the base of its buildings. 

47. We shall have raised and fastened you to the trunk and 
large branches of the tree of the science of good and ill, 
whence you will of yourselves glide out upon all the rest, and 
reach all its extremities, grasping all its fruits and leaves. We 
shall have put you on the track of all duties, just as some sable 
navigator, after having passed you over yellow currents which 
pierce the blue bosom of the sea, will guide you to the 
mouth of a great Indian river, and at last into its wide, em- 
banked channel, pointing out to you all its affluents, leaving it 
to yourselves afterwards to penetrate the latter, ascend all their 
branches to the most magnificent fountains, and the smaller 
streamlets. 

48. Moreover, the sketch of general morality will serve the 
solution of the question of public instruction, which is the in- 
dispensable condition to the preservation of modern society 
and to its progress. 

49. The good and evil which we have to discover, refer to 
ourselves, other men, and inferior beings. That is what we are 
about to investigate, leaving it to the reader to apply for him- 
self the proposition hitherto established, to arrive at the im- 
mense aggregate of duties that constitute morality. For 
example : 

Peace of mind is a good. Hence we ought — 

To develop it in the soul, if it is not there (Prop. I) ; 

ISTot to destroy it, if it is there (Prop. Y) ; 

Not to prevent its developing itself there (Prop. YI) ; 

To resist whatever would tend to banish it (Prop. Ilj. 

We should — 

Substitute steam engines for the old locomotive appliances; 
gas lights for oil lights ; guns with caps for percussion guns ; 
electrical for serial telegraphs ; we should sacrifice the less for 
the greater (Prop. XII). By a misapprehension of this prin- 
ciple, we stumble on the rock of ruinous economies. 

Pride is an evil for me and for others. Hence, I ought — 
To extirpate from my heart this unclean affection (Prop. Ill) • 
To prevent whatever can arouse it (Prop. lY) ; 
Xot to stimulate and cherish it (Prop. YII) ; 
ISTot to prevent its disappearance (Prop. YlII). 



22 



As betT^een being hungry, or undergoing the pain of labor, 
the human race should submit to hibor (Prop. X). King David, 
compelled to choose between war, famine, and a three days-' 
pestilence, thought this last the least of the tliree scourges. 



DUTIES TOWARD OURSELVES. 

50. We are composed of body and .soul. The soul presents 
itself under two aspects, its passive and its active sides. Pas- 
sivity is twofold — that of the heart and that of tlie understand- 
ing. There is also a twofold activity corresponding to each 
passivity. 

fxVSSIVITY OF THE HEART. 

51. The heart, or sensibility, is the soul, in so far as it is 
susceptible of feelings, of sensation. To make a child under- 
stand what a feeling is, it is sufficient to say to it, " Put your 
hand in the fire; what you experience is a sensation. If you 
thrust your naked arms into nettles, that which causes you to 
draw them quickly back, is a sensation. When you eat an 
apricot, that which makes you tell your companion that the 
fruit is good, is a sensation." 

52. The science of feelings is called ^Esthetics. The words 
unfeeling, benumbed, insensibility, indicate an incapacity for 
feeling. Hyperesthesia is excessive delicacy of the sensibility. 

53. Feelings are indefinite in degree. A few good sensations 
and some bad ones, may exist simultaneously in our souls. 
There are some that necessarily exclude each other, grief and 
joy, for example. May all good sensations exist simultaneously, 
and also all bad ? We do not know anything about it. What 
is quite certain, is that no man has ever experienced either the 
one or the other. The bad are the most common and the most 
intense. It may be questioned whether any person ever expe- 
rienced a sensation in its utmost possible intensity. Neverthe- 
less, people die of extreme feelings, particularly of those which 
are conflicting. There are others that are created in the soul 
immediately, no one knows how. There are some that result 
iTom different states, or changes of the body. Others result 
from external objects through the intervention of the body : 
such are odors and savors. The activity may influence the 
first directly. In this way, it encourages indignation, for ex- 
ample, nourishes it, augments it, and removes, diminishes, and 
effaces anger, shame, grief, etc. It reacts upon the second only 
by operating upon the body ; upon the third only by bringing 
external objects into contact or disconnection with the body. 



23 



54. The feelings are matters of the first importance. Tliey 
are that part of ourselves through which we truly live. They 
are moral good or ill par excellence ; other goods or ills are en- 
tirely subordinate to tliera. If a man is pitied who, destitute 
in winter of either shoes or stockings, nevertheless is not 
affected by cold — the answer still is, He does not feel it." 
The destruction of cities, the rending of the globe, the darken- 
ing of the sun, tlie derangement of the order of the stars, tlie 
annihilation of the universe are not to be compared with the 
woes of a soul abandoned to anguish and torture. 

55. Indifferent feelings are denied by some psychologists. 
Others claim that they are the most numerous and are the or- 
dinary fare of the mind. The feelings that pertain to what is 
most intimate in us, are known by experience, beside which 
pictures and paintings are nothing. 

GOOD SENTIMENTS AND FEELINGS. 

56. Admiration. A sentiment produced by the sight of any 
thing remarkably good or beautiful toward which the attention 
is strongly attracted. 

Allurement. . A powerful charm. 

Amazement. A surprise which causes one to gape with the 
air of ignorance. 

Appetite.,, The pleasure caused by the taste of food and the 
appeasing of hunger. 

Ardor. Warmth of emotion. 

57. Assurance. The calmness which one attains in certairi 
critical circumstances, and which is inspired by the conscious- 
ness of innocence and of truth. 

Astonishment — Springs from a violent shock given by an 
unexpected object. 

Ataraxy — Arises from exemption from excitement of opinion. 
Attraction. That which attracts us toward a person, a work. 

58. Bashfulness. An honorable shame pleasing to the sub- 
ject of it, and which pleases others, the sight of whom calls it 
forth, especially if they are superiors — which causes blushes to 
rise on the face if we are surprised in the least impropriety 
w^hich seems to be tinctured with immorality Shame-faced. 

59. Beatitude — ^Hesults from the satisfaction of the imagina- 
tion. 

Burning zeal. The highest degree of mental warmth. 
Candor — Is purity of soul pervading the language and out- 
ward acts. 

Calmness. The tranctuillity succeeding agitation. 



24 



Charm. A feeling that is powerfully attractive. 
Contentment — Is caused bj a success, by such action in 
another as suits our wishes, our interests, and his duties. 

61. Coolness. Tranquillity, calmness of mind in presence of 
a great danger. Stoical coolness. 

Delight — Afay spring from our relation to persons, localities, 
objects. For example, one may take delight in this flower- 
garden. 

Delectation. A feeling for which one has a fondness, which 
is enjoyed with reflection. 

Ecstacy. Suspension of the action of the senses by the sight 
of great beauties. 

62. Emotion. A feeling which agitates the soul, and mani- 
fests itself outwardly by movements of the eye, and the whole 
countenance. 

Emulation — Inclines us to emulate noble deeds. 
Enthusiasm. A momentary impulse of admiration caused by 
the real or ideal aspect of a wonderful object. Enthusiast. 
Eupathy. Gentleness, resignation under suffiering. 

63. Exaltation — Inclines the soul to rise above ordinary feel- 
ings and thoughts to enter the domain of imaginary perfection. 
Generally this emotion is bad, because it disorders the under- 
standing, which no longer sees objects as they are, and con- 
founds reality with what is but pure possibility. 

Expansion of heart. Is a feeling Avhich dilates the soul, and 
seems to enlarge the capacity of the heart, as the sap expands 
a flower, or as a fluid overflows the sides of a dish. 

Enchantment. A charm that dazzles the imagination. 

64. Gaiety — Tends to display itself in every movement of the 
body, to express itself outwardly by song and mirth. It is a 
constitutional tendency. It creates the jolly fellow, the merry 
bhide, the lark, the buck, the boon companion. Humor is a 
fine and satirical gaiety. 

65. Glory — Proceeds from the thought of great deeds that 
one has done, enhanced with the knowledge and judgment of 
men. 

Happiness — In the sense of a feeling, results from a series of 
good feelings, which, if durable, constitute the felicity so rarely 
met wit on earth. 

66. Heat — Is produced by the presence of caloric in the 
pores of the body. Eaised to a proper degree, it makes an 
essential part of our being ; but, when too intense, is one of the 
most formidable and most horrible sensation. Caloric is con- 
veyed into the pores by Are, food, non-conducting substances, 
by movements and contact with whatever contains it. Suffb- 



25 



eating heat is the oppressive lieat resulting from certain atmos- 
pheric temperature. GloTving with warmth. 

Hilarity. An outburst of gaiety through some amusing inci- 
dent, and which is manifested immediately by laughter. 

67. Honor. An exquisite sentiment of virtue. It is the 
feeling of a longing to be in harmony with the moral laws, and 
consequently of a want of the esteem of other men and of our 
own. The slightest fault, the slightest blame wounds, alarms, 
and embarrasses a man of honor. He w^ho has a keen sense of 
honor will always be an honest man. He who is destitute of 
it, lacks little of being one of the rabble. 

68. Humility. This sentiment is inspired by the knowledge 
of our imperfection, of our wretchedness, of our insignificance, 
w^hen we compare ourselves wnth superior beings. 

Intoxication. A condition of the soul produced by wine. 
Analogous condition, as to th^ exaltation, to which certain 
feelings arouse us. The first is ordinarily bad. Intoxication of 
victory, of the passions. 

69. Joy. A delightful emotion felt in the depths of the 
soul. Enjoyment is an exercise of the me partaking of joy. 
Foolish, ephemeral joys. Ineffable joys. To leap for joy. 
Filled with joy. A jovial person. 

70. Love of country. A feeling that attaches us to our native 
soil exclusively, causing all climes to be inhabited. The Lap- 
lander is delighted in the midst of snows and eternal ice. 
Russia, the cold in w^hich country sinks to 45 degrees below 
zero, and is terrible to the nations of the south, is called the 
happy empire. Tirabuctoo, the city of the desert, under a sun 
w^hich is vertical and always red as the eye of a cyclop, puts 
travellers to death, that they may not profane it by revealing 
its existence to the unbelievers. 

71. Melomania. Excessive fondness for music. 
Metriopathy. The state of him who moderates his pas- 
sion. 

Modesty. A mixture of shame and respect bearing on con- 
duct, on decency in the movements and attitudes of the body, 
on moderation in speech. 

72. Naivety. A disposition of soul which concerns the 
simplicity and sincerity with which it reveals itself. 

Peace. Repose, tranquillity experienced by the soul that is 
neither troubled, nor agitated by passion. 
Philautia. Love of one's self. 
Philobiosia. Love of life. 

Phlegm. A mild and calm affection which excludes all emo- 
tion and resists them without struggle and effort. 



26 



-78. Pleasure. An agreeable emotion produced by tbe sight 
of what is good, or by the gratification of the senses. 

Frnrity. A kind of titillation attended with warmth (some- 
times inconvenient). 

Purity. A condition of soul exempt from every evil thought, 
evil desire, and evil action. 

Quietude and repose. An agi*eeable state incompatible with 
all agitation. Euthymia. 

74. Eapture — Springs from the contemplation of an order of 
superior events. State of the soul transported by a great joy. 

Refreshment. Feeling experienced by the soul when cool- 
ness tempers for it a great corporeal heat. 

Satisfaction — Of a father with children that conduct them- 
selves w«]l, of a master with faithfal servants. 

75. Self-satisfaction. The raven was filled with self-satisfac- 
tion upon hearing itself praised by the fox. 

Security. The state in which we have the conviction of 
having escaped some great danger. 

Serenity. Calmness mingled with sweetness of temper, and 
intelligence. 

76. Start. Surprise upon sudden waking. 
Stupor — Is closely akin to stupefaction. 

Stupefaction. One is stupefied by a surprise that renders 
one motionless, and seems to deprive one of the use of mind 
and senses. 

Suavity — Is somewhat akin to gentleness. 

Surprise. A person is surprised by the sudden presence of 
an unexpected object, of an event which it is supposed impos- 
sible to happen. 

77. Titillation — Results from a delicate touching, and in- 
clines us to laugh, to start. When too much excited it be- 
comes bad. Ticklish. A kind of irritating tickling. 

Tranquillity. An agreeable condition consisting in the ex- 
emption from all agitation. 

78. Triumph. Delight that arises from the overcoming of 
obstacles or enemies, and from the applause of men. 

Voluptuousness. Pleasure of the senses. Great pleasure. 
Well-being. A state of tranquillity in which one takes de- 
light. 

Wonder. Surprise which attracts and channs. 

79. Wrath. Strong passion which powerfully arouses the 
operations of the spiritual and physical activity. Overflowing 
witli wrath. Family : anger> indignation, fury, rage. Irrita- 
tion. 



27 



EVIL SENTIMENTS AND UNPLEASANT SENSATIONS. 

80. Acerbity. A mean between the sharp and the sour. 
Acidity — Verges on the acrid. Acidulous. 

Acridness. A sharp, pungent taste. The taste of sorbs and 
sloes, of medlars not mellow. Figuratively speaking, a kind of 
analogous aflfection. 

Acrimony. A kind of bitterness. 

Affliction — Is caused by any grave accident. Mourning. 

81. Alfright. Continual alarm. 

Atfront — Arises from a reproach or an insult offered in 
the presence of witnesses. Its intensity is in proportion to the 
honor and the shame. Cruel affront. To swallow an affront. 

Agitation— Seems to resemble the trembling of the water, or 
the waving of a bough when moved by the wind. 

Agony. Great mental suffering. 

82. Alarm. The tocsin sounds the alarm. The cholera 
alarms. Great and sudden fear which an unexpected peril 
occasions. 

Anguish. Great affliction. 

Anorexia. Aversion to food. Want of appetite. 

83. Anxiety. A great affliction mingled with disquietude 
and fear. 

Avarice. A gross affection which attaches the soul to 
material objects. 

Apprehension— Is less strong than alarm. It is caused by 
a danger passed. Mingled with horror, it is fright. 

84. Bile. A kind of gloomy anger. 

Bitterness. Soot is bitter. A painful emotion analogous 
arising from some accident, from some injustice. 

Cacopathia. Evil affection resulting from the disposition of 
the organs. 

Cacothymia. An unpleasant disposition of the mind. 

Caprice. A sudden attack of low spirits which impels the 
will to eccentric deeds. 

Cardialgia. Burning in the stomach, or pain with nausea and 
weakness. 

85. Care. A blending of chagrin and disquietude. Careful. 
Careless. Care-crazed. 

Cephalgia. Head-ache. 

Chagrin — Arises from discontent and the vexations of life. 
Colic. Violent pain in the stomach, the intestines. 

86. Cold. This sensation is the antithesis of heat 
which it succeeds when the latter has disappeared, as night 
succeeds day, the removal of caloric being the cause. Tepid- 



28 



ness is tlie intermediate state between heat and cold, as the 
dawn and twilight are the transition from day to niocht. 
Chilly. 

87. Compunction. Extreme regret for faults committed. 
Confusion. A serious error proved and revealed to men pro- 
duces confusion. 

Consternation. Astonishment, amazement, or horror that 
confounds the faculties, and incapacitates a person for consulta- 
tion and execution. 

Constraint. Embarrassment disguised under a false coun- 
tenance. 

Contumely. A species of insult. , 

88. Covetousness. An ill-regulated taste for a thing which 
causes it to be desired. 

Curiosity— Arises from an object, the sight of which affords 
pleasure. It is not always bad. 

Dishonor — Is a sense of shame brought upon us by the viola- 
tion of any important maxim of morality, and by the contempt 
of men which ensues. 

89. Desolation. Extreme affliction. 

Disappointment. That feeling we experience when an object 
on which we were expecting to lay our hand fails us, or 
escapes our grasp. 

90. Discomfort — Is a compression of the mind which thwarts 
its operations, as compression of the body suspends its move- 
ments. A child is uneas}^ in company with an aged person of 
gravity and austerity. Restored to its comrades, it feels its 
spiritual activities resume their wonted freedom and elasticity. 
A nameless indisposition extending to the whole system, which 
is often the forerunner of disease. 

91. Discontent. The contrary of content. 

Disgust. Disgust at food, with or of a person, with labor. 

Despair. A good the loss of which cannot be prevented, or 
an evil, the coming of which our elForts are useless to prevent, 
produces in the soul an affliction, a discouragement which con- 
stitutes despair. When it is great," it tempts us to our own 
destruction. 

92. Disgrace. A loss of favor the cause of it. 
Displeasure. The dislike, aversion which one conceives for a 

thing which shocks and displeases. 

Disquietude. The feeling arising from anything annoying 
which one apprehends. 

93. Dissatisfaction. I have experienced dissatisfaction for 
having concerned myself in the affairs of such or such a man. 

Distress — is caused by an extreme danger. 



29 

Dysodia. The odor of the fetid exhalations of the hody. 
Dysorexia. Poor or feeble appetite. 
Dysthemia. A kind of anxiety. 
Dysthesia. Impatience of tlie siclc. 
Dysthimia. The sadness of the sick. 

94. Embarrassment. One experiences this feeling when one 
knows not what to speak, how to contain one's self, how to 
move, or to perform any outward acts. 

95. Ennui. There is no one who has not known what it is 
to say, '^I am dejected, I am in low spirits." It is weariness 
with ourselves, rendering us insupportable to ourselves, inclin- 
ing us to escape and get away from ourselves. Ennui follows 
us everywhere. It is the evil which afflicts all ages, all condi- 
tions, almost all the days of our life. In great intensity, it is 
the spleen, which causes many suicides. Occupation of the 
mind, and bodily labor most commonly prevent and dissipate 
this affection. 

96. Exasperation. Condition of him who is excessively ex- 
aspirated. 

Execration. Extreme horror. 

Fear. Disquietude of soul in view of a possible and future 
misfortune. Fear of the wolf, of the thunder, of the death. 
Fearful, timid. Momentary fear. Faintheartedness. Fright 
is extreme fear. Terror is fear continued. Panic terror. 
Dread. Dismay. Awe is respectful fear. Fearless. 

97. Flurry. An assassination, the falling of a house, for 
example, puts a village or a city in a flurry. 

Formication. A sensation similar to that which we expe- 
rience when ants crawl over the surface of the body. 

Frantic desire — Of food, for example. 

Frenzy — Is anger with alienation of mind. 
. Gastronomy — Is the feeling Avhich creates the desire and the 
search for good cheer. It is not always bad. 

98. Gluttony — Is a shameful gratification, at bottom morose 
and insatiable, which cleaves to the savors connected with 
food. The glutton longs for delicious dishes with the eye and 
the palate. He eats when he does not need, solely for that 
irregular sensation. Daintiness is delicacy in gormandizing, 
which then demands more delicious dishes. Gluttony will 
with difficulty get the mastery over us, if we are convinced 
that it belongs to brutes to live to eat, but to man to eat to 
live ; that the pleasure of appeasing a strong and genuine hun- 
ger is a hundred times more agreeable tban that of satisfying a 
gross sensuality, and if we never eat with a false appetite. 

99. Grievance, xi kind of mortification. 



30 



Hsemophobia. Horror of blood. 

Horror. Extreme aversion witli fear. Abhorrence. 

100. Heavy-heartedness. Chagrin produces in the heart, as 
it were, a swelling which finds vent in tears and lamentations. 

Heart-sore. Great mortification mingled with spite. Heart- 
break. Heart-breaking. Heart-ache. 

Humiliation. Shame arising from ill-treatment. 

101. Hunger. Hunger is a sensation so dreadful that it 
impels men to eat the most disgusting things, and to devour 
one another. Famine. Cruel hunger. Famished. Pantagrue- 
lian hunger. Orexia. Pseudorexia. Cynorexia. Bulimia. 
To fast. Tantalized creature. Starvation. 

102. Hydrophobia. Dread of water. 

Hypochondria. A species of dreamy melancholy which 
springs from the vice of hypochondriacs. 

Insomnia. A condition in which one is when he cannot 
sleep. A similar affection. 

Irksomeness. Fatigue, ennui. 

Itching. The sting of an inflammation, of an ulcer. 

103. Laceration — Of the soul. 

Malacia. An affection of the stomach, causing an eager de- 
sire for accustomed dishes, and which makes one eat to 
excess. 

Megrim. Headache often periodical, with fatigue, straining 
of the eyes, weakness. 

104. Melancholy. A sort of continued sadness depending 
upon the temperament, or a long series of misfortunes. It 
seeks solitude and isolation, renders one gloomy and dull in 
society. Nympholepsia. 

105. Moodiness. A sour, acrimonious temper, which has 
often no plausible cause, breaks forth in movements and words, 
and renders a man unsociable. Its issues are caprice, of which 
we have already spoken, fantasy, whims, crotchets. Fantasy 
attaches itself to something less odd than caprice, more rational. 
"Whims go and come at pleasure or displeasure, undertake a 
deed, abandon and destroy it. Crotchets exclude all reason, 
and incline to madness. Ill-humor makes persons cross, peev- 
ish, disagreeable. It encourages anger, and when it has re- 
ceived its succor, it subsides by fault-finding, grumbling, dis- 
puting, crying, scolding, bawling, murmuring, storming, com- 
plaining, quarrelling. Alas for him who is under the necessity 
of living with a moody person ! Hobby. Whimsical person. 
Yertigo. 

106. Moroseness. Biting, bitter melancholy the ordinary 
effect of the imagination which amuses itself with false ideas. 



31 



with fiiUe feai-^. Th-c cniise needs only to be assailed to destroy 
tlie elfoc^t. 

Mortification — Arises from liiuniliating treatment. 
Nausea. Incliaation to vomit. 

Nightmare. A sensation of suffocation in sleep. Analogous 
oppression. 

107. Nostalgia, Home- sickness. It is a consequence of the 
love of country. The Laplander perishes, dies with nostalgia 
when remote from home. He who is obliged to change his 
locality, should at the same time resist the longing for country 
and home-sickness. Frequent absence, topographical and geo- 
graphical knowledge are the surest and most efficacious means 
to turn the mind from the thought of home and render it cos- 
mopolitan. How many people are there who cannot lose sight 
of their town-clock, their province, without weeping! 

108. Odaxis. The irritation of cutting teeth. Itching of 
the gums. 

Odontalgia. Tooth-ache. 

109. Offense, That which we experience upon a violation 
of our rights, of duties which we have much at heart. The 
offence becomes au outrage when these rights are in the high- 
est degree dear to us, as dear as life itself. A sea captain 
causes an old sailor to be beaten for some lapse in duty. ''The 
outrage is a cruel one, captain,^' says he; ^' there is nothing 
but your life-blood that can efface it." One evening when he 
is on the watch, seeing his offender approaching, he lays him 
dead with a shot. The crew, in alarm, demand the murderer, 
"Here he is,'' says the sailor, coolly, "kill me at once; you 
know my grief; I die without regret." 

110. Ophtalgia. Fain in the eye without inflammation. 
Oppression. A sort of suffocation. 

Osteocope. Profound and acute pain in the bones. 
Otalgia. Ear-ache. 

111. Pain. I am pained at his malady, at his accident. The 
affections that attend laborious efforts. Acute sensation caused 
by the derangements of the body. Piercing, shooting, sharp 
pain. 

Panophobia, Nocturnal terror with fever, attended with 
sweat and convulsions in children. 
Panthophobia. Fear of all objects. 

112. Passion. The possession of an object, or the sight of it, 
certain systems of actions, or occupations, promise us happi- 
ness, an enjoyment. The thought of this happiness, of this en- 
joyment, causes it to flow from the future, as it were, to the 
heart, which experiences it by anticipation, by a foretaste. 



32 



This foretaste impels us energetically to procure for ourselves 
its cause. Such is the nature of passion, which is good or bad, 
according as in the sentiment itself, or in the means of realizing 
it, there is or there is not, anything base or immoral. Passion 
for money, for gain, for wealth for sex, for play, for strong 
liquors, for stealing, for horses, for luxury, for glory, for study, 
for labor, etc. Fermentation, effervescence, shock, bubbling, 
whirlwind, burst, torrent, blindness, storms of passions. Domi- 
nant passion. Passion also sometimes signifies enjoyment 
itself ; passion prevents the avaricious man from separating 
from his gold. To glut one's passions. 

113. Periodinia. Pain in the stomach. 

Perplexity. Inquietude, concern with irresolution, attended 
with fear of a bad issue, w^hich cannot be prevented. Perplex- 
ing situation. 

Perversion. Derangement through the w^liole system of the 
sensibility, caused by the sight of a great misfortune. 
Philocrysis. Love of gold. 

Pica. Depraved appetite in women Avhich makes them eat 
plaster, coal, etc. 

114. Pleurodinia. Acute pain in the breast. 

Posteromania. Page for transmitting one's name to pos- 
terity. It is known that to satisfy this passion, Erostratus 
burned the wonderful temple of Minerva at Ephesus. 

Pricking. The feeling arising from having the body pricked 
with a pointed instrument. 

Privation. That which one experiences on being deprived of 
of what one desires. 

Kachialgia. Violent pains in the lower belly, loins and back. 

115. Kegret. Pain at the loss of anything, or at having done 
anything. 

Kemorse. Painful affection which follows the violation of 
duty. The remorse is so much the more lively as the senti- 
ment of honor is the more intense, 

Eepugnance. A kind of disgust which inclines us to repel a 
thing or a person with which one might be brought in contact 
or connexion. A medicine to be taken repels one. 

116. Respect for man. Fear of the judgment of men in tlie 
performance of certain duties. 

Pinging. A sensation which one experiences resembling the 
sound of a bell. 

Sadness. Sorrow mingled with melancholy. Pierced w^ith 
sadness. 

Satiety. A kind of disgust which follows the satisfaction of 
a passion, of a want. 



33 



117. Shame — Is tliat feeling which succeeds iminoral action 
or conduct, which causes us to avoid men, the sight of wliom 
is intolerable. On all occasions Avhen we are in harmony with 
the moral laws^ it should never appear on our foreheads. — • 
Shameless. iS'ature has also conjoined this feeling with the 
sight by others of certain evils of the soul and the body, and 
of parts peculiar to our bodily constitution, in order to induce 
ns to keep them concealed, and to provide in decency and 
secrecy for the satisfaction of the wants connected Avith them. 

Sorrow. The uneasiness or pain of mind wiiich is produced 
by the loss of any good, real or supposed, or by disappointment 
in expectation of good. Grief, regret. The loss of a friend 
we love occasions sorrow ; the loss of property, of health, or 
any source of happiness causes sorrow. 

Sourness. Vinegar occasions sourness. Hatred, which is 
akin to this sentiment. 

118. Solicitude — Is occasioned by the reflections to be made, 
and the systems to be wrought for the realization of our out- 
ward advantages. 

Smart. Pain arising from the injury which causes a pungent 
sensation. 

Spite. Chagrin with wrath. Spiteful. 
Start — Is a sudden and transient alarm. 

Stench — Is produced by vegetable and animal bodies in decay. 
Synonyms : Infection, fetidness, stink, funk. Cloaca. 

119. Suffering-— Is a protraction of pain, and implies some- 
thing less strong, less acute, in a simple acceptation of the 
word. 

Tartness. Unripe fruits are tart. 

Throbbing of the head. Fatigue caused by noise or by ap- 
plication. 

Tingling — Is the same sensation as the formication, but in 
which the irritations are more numerous, more fluctuating, and 
more active. 

120. Throe. Lively and acute pain in the bowels. 
Tinkling. A buzzing in one's ear. 

Torment — Is not quite so strong as torture. They both sig- 
nify likewise great mental pain. 

121. Torture. Great pain arising from violence done ta the 
body. A man under question to whom fire is applied, whose 
limbs are broken or crushed, or who is flayed, experiences tor- 
ture. 

Trouble. An emotion which disturbs reflection and sus- 
pends it. 

122. Thirst — Is caused by a want in the throat and stomach 



34 



to be brought in contact with some cooling liquid. It is burn- 
ing, ardent. Polydipsia suffocates, stifles, devours, deprives 
of flesh, causes death. Thirst j. To quench one's thirst, to 
slake it. 

Tumult. Movement attended with trouble and embarrass- 
ment. 

Twinging. Agitation of mind in different directions. 
Tremor. Fear which causes trembling. 
Urodiny. Pain in urinating. Strangury. 

123. Wrath, anger. A blind excitation of the powers by 
which the heart is grieved, and which impel a man to disor- 
derly acts. Inflamed, boiling with anger. To shake with 
anger. Ire. Irritated. Irascible. Choler. Irritable. Cho- 
leric. Fury is excessive anger. Rage is the last stage of fury, 
its paroxysm. Furious. These sentiments are to those above- 
mentioned, 79, like families of plants of the same genus, some 
of which are wholesome, oleraceous, and others w^ild or poi- 
sonous. 

124. Zoanthropia. A melancholy in which a man believes 
himself changed into an animal. 

Transport — Is the highest degree of any feeling inclining 
the me to act with energy : Love, hatred, ecstacy, pain, 
dolor, rage, remorse, glory, pride, admiration, gladness, grati- 
tude, etc. 

The allaying, or quieting of a painful emotion or sensation is 
called consolation, balm, or solace, comfort. 

125. The character is the affection inherent in the nature of 
a man, the sentiment that is permanent in his heart, with 
which all his intellectual and corporeal operations are impreg- 
nated, which is that in him most salient, strong and vigorous 
which his sensibility suffers to transpire. If this affection is 
mirthfulness, the individual is said to be gay, of a sprightly char- 
acter, a jovial temper; if it be caprice, he is fickle, capricious. 
In a word, the character is good or bad, according as the habi- 
tual mood of the heart is a good or bad affection. The charac- 
ter passes for a great deal in the worth of a person. We can 
correct it, modify it ; but it is almost impossible to destroy, or 
change it, particularly if bad. Wlien a character vacillates, 
and- wavers from good to bad, it is said to be unequal. A good 
character that is strong, never belies itself, is always the same, 
establishes equanimity of soul. 

126. We have indicated nearly all the sentiments and feel- 
ings named by language. Since, as we have said, the heart 
is the most important part of ourselves, too much care cannot 
be bestowed upon the study and cultivation of the feelings. 



35 



The 210 sentiments and feelings, nearly, which are named, 
are far from beini^ all that are possible. They are immense 
in nmnber. Every malady has its peculiar pains. Every 
object subjected to the sense of smell, produces in the me a 
peculiar odor. The odor of the mignonette is by no means 
that of the rose or of the pink. All vegetables, the flesh of all 
animals, a great number of minerals, all liquids brought into 
contact with the palate make us sensible of special savors. The 
taste of bread diflfers from that of wine ; the taste of salt from 
that of pepper, etc. Whatever is tactile or tangible, when in 
contact with any part of our body, impresses us differently. 
Pass your hand over the back of a cat, then of a sheep, over 
iron, over wood, water, stones — how great the variety of sen- 
sations ! Sounds, which are special sensations, have the virtue 
of producing sensations distinct from themselves. A traveller 
is affected in a peculiar manner every mile that he travels. In 
your neighbor's house you are not what you are in your own. 
You are not in the city as you are in the country, on the 
mountain as in the plain. It is, doubtless, because the mind 
traverses such a thread- work of impressions that peregrino- 
mania, or a fancy for distant travel, is so easily formed. 

12T. The objects apprehended by the external sight react 
upon the heart ; those comprehended by the inward sight, 
equally react upon it. Hence the remark of Beranger, To 
see is to have." The pleasures of science are the purest and 
most satisfying. Walter Scott travels on foot even to Behring^s 
Straits, and in the same way visits a portion of America. 
Archimedes, seeking to resolve a problem of geometry, is un- 
conscious of the saber which a soldier waves over his face. 
Pythagoras, having discovered the value of the square of the 
hypothenuse, expresses his joy by the sacrifice of a hecatomb. 

128. The beautiful creates pleasure ; but the ugly engenders 
disgust and sadness. Moral good above all, is a source of agree- 
able emotion. What a charm and attraction for us has the pre- 
sence, the conversation of any great personage, the sight of a 
chief of great state, surrounded by magnificence, and graced 
with stately manners. A little tooth-brush of ISTapoleon, not 
worth a penny, is sold at auction for 60 cents. The sight of 
evil in intelligent beings is intolerable to us. What feelings do 
we experience in the presence of an idiot lame, covered with 
rags, and bitten by vermin ? When bands of several thousand 
mendicants walk through the streets of certain great cities in 
Europe, do the people hurry to their windows as if to witness 
a fine regiment ? What a shock, what an alarm seizes upon a 
mass when a man falls from the top of a building, when they 



36 



see him clashed in pieces upon the paveraenti We are particn- 
larlj affected at the vi elation of duty. We sliiver before an 
assassin. Society hangs an invisible cloud of disgust, sorrow, 
and horror over those receptacles of crime called galleys and 
prisons. Snatch a person from deep water in midwinter at the 
peril of your own life, and every one delighted, ovei-whelms 
you with congratulations. A father who procures property, 
education for his children, who regulates his household well, 
thrives and assists others, is the idol of his family and the glory 
of his township. A scholar of irreproachable conduct is the 
honor and delight of his master, the favorite of his fellow- 
pupils, and the joy of his parents; a fresh proof of the reality 
of duty. 

ACTIVITY EELATIYE TO THE HEART. 

THE GOOD AND EVIL IN THIS ACTIVITY. 

129. The faculty of acting from one's self or of not acting is 
called liberty. To liberty are opposed necessity and co-action. 
Master of one's self. 

130. We have said in the foregoing article that the me may 
act immediately upon certain feelings, may create and destroy 
them. Indeed, to rejoice is nothing else than to call forth joy 
in one's self. To excite, to cherish hatred in one's self, is to 
hate, to detest. To be irritated, to be angry, is to arouse, to 
allow anger. To restrain, to calm one's self, is to diminish, to 
dissipate. To console one's self is to dismiss a painful emotion, 
to grieve is to give it free course. The same explanations are 
to be made in reference to the moods expressed by the verbs to 
admire, to care, to abhor, to fret, to rest, to delight in, to 
pity, to make one's self merry, to amuse one's self, to take 
offence, etc. 

131. The qualities good and bad of the capacity of acting on 
the feelings, are strength and weakness, and their various de- 
grees. This power is developed and confirmed by exercise. 
The feelings react upon the activity. This is true in general. 
The more expansive they are, the more power has the me in 
extending their sway and retaining them, and the less ability to 
dissipate them. 

132. The causes of weakness in the activity of the heart are, 
dejection, languor, effeminacy, laxity, discomfort, discourage- 
ment, dullness, exhaustion, debility, fatigue, inanition, lassitude, 
lethargy, paralysis, sloth, pusillanimity, sleep, somnolency, 
apathy, torpor, chill, and the condition indicated by the ad- 



37 



jectives astounded, disconcerted, desperate, confounded, petri- 
fied, subdued, abashed, spent. 

133. The causes of strength are fire, nerve, animation, com- 
fort, elasticity, juvenility, vigor, energy, courage, resolution, 
hardihood, ardor, momentum, 

134. The ancient philosophers knew how to act upon the sen- 
sibility. Posidonius suifering under an attack of the gout, said : 

O pain however fierce thou mayest be, I will never admit 
that thou art an evil." Anaxarchus defying torture, uttered 
these words to his executioner, by whose order he was brayed 
in a mortar : " Crush this leathern sack (his body), as for An- 
axarchus himself, thou wilt never afifect him." 

135. The surprising eflfect of chloroform, which removes all 
painful sensations in surgical operations, seems to establish the 
fact that the heart is without feeling, if the mind is not con- 
scious of it. 

PASSIVITY OF THE UJS^DEESTANDmG. 

GOOD AND EVIL. 

136. The understanding, or intellect, the intelligence, or 
power of conception, is that faculty of the soul by which 
we have a knowledge, or idea of things, and become ac- 
quainted with sounds. Man, whose body is so small, is, by his 
understanding, one ot the grandest beings in the universe. 
He is a gulf in w^hich all others are absorbed. There is nothing 
so concealed, nothing so extended, nothing so remote that the 
mind may not grasp it in thought. If we cannot know every 
thing, it is because we lack the means for observation. 

137. The fact of acquiring the notion of a thing is perception, 
also expressed by the words, beholding, intuition, intellection, 
^eing, perceive, distinguish, discern, comprehend, find, foresee, 
anticipate, learn, penetrate, divine, trace out. 

138. The understanding acquires the notion of its body, of phy- 
sical objects by the reports of the eyes, hearing, taste, smell, and 
touch ; in this sense it is called the testimony of the senses, 
the external sense. As man's capacity of interior self-know- 
ledge, it is the inward sense. As a faculty of knowing our 
duties, it is the moral sense, the conscience, the inward judge. 
As the faculty of arriving, by means of dialectics, at things not 
immediately perceptible, it is reason. As the faculty of know- 
ing things that no longer exist, or which distance puts out of 
reach, it constitutes the memory. The continuance of the 
notion of an object absent or destroyed, or the fact of recalling 
it to mind, takes the name of recollection, remembrance, remin- 
iscence, or recalling. Forgetfulness is the loss of an idea. 



38 



139. A language is a system of pictures, sounds, and other 
signs, wliich bring the truth before the understanding. The 
understanding perceives physical things past, remote, and to 
come, by an intermediary faculty which is the imagination, a 
faculty no less wonderful than the first. The imagination is that 
faculty of our mind which discovers in it an immaterial sub- 
stance faithfully representing material substances and their 
modifications. I am a thousand, ten thousand miles fj-om 
Paris, Constantinople, New York, or the steppes of Siberia ; by 
it I see them as if they were under my bodily eyes. It was by 
the strength of his imagination that Napoleon, to use the his- 
torical expression, passed Europe in review as if it were a single 
head. 

140. The mind is cognizant of as many different sounds as 
there are bodies within reach of the ear. For them too 
there exists a kind of imagination. 

141. The memory is faithful, retentive, tenacious, reliable, 
local, happy, ready, — or forgetful, feeble, short. A great me- 
mory is a living encyclopedia. Mnemonics or mnemotechny. 
The imagination is sprightly, strong, fertile, ardent, brilliant, 
ready, — or feeble, barren, dull, dark. Conscience is healthy, 
scrupulous, timorous, — perverted, msensible, elartic, seared. Its 
delicacy is moral tact. 

The following are the good and the bad appellations that 
may be applied to a man in reference to the understanding. 

142. Good. The mind is clear, cultivated, untrammeled, en- 
lightened, erudite, fertile, acute, open, penetrating, perspicuous, 
sparkling, self-possessed, profound, sound, subtle, superior. A 
man is skilled, schooled, experienced, well-informed, intelligent, 
versed in letters, reasonable, sagacious, learned, scientific, sen- 
sible, intellectual, an argus, a genius. 

443. Bad. A mind wire-drawn, deranged, odd, flurried, 
limited, stunted, raving, distracted, abstracted, wild, perplexed, 
blunted, thick, narrow, rusty, cracked, fascinated, cramped, 
demented, stupid, uncultivated, giddy, obtuse, empty. A man 
is visionary, brutish, fantastical and extravagant, foolish, idiotic, 
ignorant, imbecile, illiterate, unlearned, unreasonable, simple, 
thick-headed, stupid, crack-brained, dreamy, doltish, wrong- 
headed, blockhead, booby, coltish, ignoramus, half-witted, mad- 
cap, demoniac, wantwit, crazy, shallow-brained, addle-headed, an 
ass. Charm, amazement, ilhision, hallucination, fainting, syncope, 
vertigo. Somnambulist, night-walker, or sleep-walker. Gruss ig- 
norance. Rawness. 

144. The only means which man possesses of developing his un- 
derstanding, and his imagination, of escaping the degrading epi- 



39 



tlicts above g-iven, and of enricliinof one's self with tlie f^ood, is to 
brino' the mind into contact with realities. Tha mind that has 
not looked uponinith is in obscurity, darkness. As soon as truth 
has made its appearance before the understandinij;', there arises be- 
tween the two a lig-ht in which the second discovers tlie first. 
This is the case at least with the interior perception. P]xterior 
perception demands the li.j^ht of day, or of fire. Facility of con- 
ception is in proportion to the amplitude of our knowledge. It 
follows the growing and declining periods of life. 

145. In the following article we show by what operations the 
mind enters the dominions of truth. But they are too vast. Our 
understanding lacks the time and means to reach every point 
in them, it is necessary to restrict ourselves to a few. What 
ought we to know ? Moral science. The knowledge of wdiat is 
good and evil to us carries with it that of the object to which 
they attach, just as to grasp and well embrace a country on a 
map, we need the confines of the countries and the borders of the 
seas, by which it is bounded. The theory of duties, moral good 
and evil ought then to hold the first place in our understanding, 
after some knowledge of the nature of our being, and the objects 
in which reside the qualities calculated to satisfy our wants. In 
the residue of speculative truths, there is often something to faci- 
litate the understanding of a duty, or its accomplishment. The 
weight of the air is apparently a subject of pure speculation. Yet 
it has brought about the invention of the barometer ; and the 
barometer warns the farmer twenty-four hours in advance that he 
must gather in his sheaves and his hay, if he does not wish them 
to spoil in the field. Moreover, knowledge is a source of enjoy- 
ment and an ornament to the soul. 

146. The consequences or the effects of perception render them 
good or bad according as they are advantageous or disadvanta- 
geous. Yery simple things sometimes produce on us at sight of them 
the most singular effects. The Duke D'Epernou used to faint at the 
sight of a leveret. Henry IJI. could not remain alone in a room 
where there was a cat. Uladislaus, king of Poland, used to change 
color and take flight when he saw^ apples. Scaliger used to trem- 
ble before the water-cress. Lord Chancellor Bacon used to have 
fainting fits when there appeared an eclipse of the moon. 

147. Great excitement of the feelings, certain diseases, and de- 
bauchery are the ruin of the understanding. 

LIST OF SCIENCES. 

148. Achteography, anemology, authroposophy, authropog- 
raphy, authroposomatology, archoeology, architechaography, as- 



40 



trocynolog-y, astronomy, autoo-raphy, biblio^^nostics, bibliography, 
bromography, chaolog-y, chemistry, choregraphy, chronology, chro- 
nography,coniputation, cosmiraetry, cosmogony, cosmography, cos- 
cosmology, dactyology, dactyliography, demography, dynamics, 
galactograph}^ gastronomy, genealogy, geogeny, geognosy, geo- 
graphy, geology, geohydrography, geometry, geonomy, geoscopy, 
geostatics, glyptognosy, glyptography, halurgy.heteroteties, history, 
biography, natural historj^, hydraulics, hydrocynamics, hydrosta- 
tics, horropics, mathematics, meteorology, micrography, mineral- 
ogy, mythology, necrography, necrology, numismatics, orology, 
paleography, philosophy, phoronomy, phrenology, physiography, 
physics, pneumatology, selenography, statics, statistics, teratos* 
copy, theology, toreumatography. 

ACTIYITT REFERRING TO THE UNDERSTANDING. 

THE GOOD AND BAD. 

149. The me in presence of the truth performs the acts indi- 
cated by the infinitives, to observe, compare, classify, infer, 
deduce, judge, mentally affirm, believe, will. 

150. When substances and their modes of being are set before 
the understanding either by their belonging to it, or by the imagi- 
nation, or by proximity, or by speech, the understanding at first 
experiences only a confused, imperfect notion. I spread before 
your eyes a map of Europe. Your survey does not at once seize 
upon all the details. At the first glance, you discover but an out- 
line, lines, letters, colors, white and black. You must draw nearer 
to find kingdoms, seas, rivers, canals, mountains, cities, etc. The 
same rule holds for every object, whether physical or metaphysical, 
however slight complex. The efforts you make to extend your 
conceptions to every point of the map, to get a clear, complete 
conception of it, is called observation. 

151. Observation upon our inward being, is reflection; upon 
what is exterior, attention ; when exercised by the eyes, it is 
looking ; by tlie ear, it is hearing, listening ; by the nose, it is 
smelling, scenting; by the palate, tasting; by the touch, feel- 
ing, touching, groping, fumbling. 

152. Observation is also indicated by the words noticing, 
watching, examination, inquisition, investigation, application, 
inspecting, espying, calculate, seek, combine, contemplate, con- 
sider, examine thoroughly, deliberate, look at, study, explore, 
search, watch for, try one's wits, think, weigh, ruminate, sound, 
scrutinize, watch over, survey, meditate, etc. 

153. Observation embraces three facts : analysis, abstraction, 
and synthesis. I study the map of France. I cannot embrace 



41 



it at a single, direct* glance. I separate it into departments, 
cities, mountains, rivers, etc. I notice one after another, the 
departments, the cities in succession, and successively also, the 
mountains and the rivers ; this is analysis. In order to pass 
from one departmental district to another, from one city to 
another, from one mountain, or one river to another, the mind, 
while engaged with the second, must lose sight of the first class 
of objects, and while engaged w-ith the third class, must over- 
look the second, and so onward ; this is abstraction. When 
the departments, with the cities, mountains, rivers, have been 
examined, I call up again what I have lost by abstraction, and 
embrace the whole in one view ; this is synthesis. 

154. The obligation to make use of observation is the same 
as that to acquaint ourselves with our duties. The observation 
of our duties makes men prudent, vigilant, provident, collected, 
circumspect, wary, forethoughtful, cautious. The absence of 
the observation of duties makes men dissi^)ated, headless, im- 
prudent, inconsiderate, venturesome, rash, thoughtless, ^..care- 
less, unwary. 

155. Comparison is an observation made of two or of a great 
number of objects, in order to apprehend their analogies and 
differences. 

156. To classify the ideas furnished by observation is to ar- 
range in groups, classes, categories, families, those w^hich have 
a common character. You have before you to sort out, a heap 
of apples, pears, plums, peaches, quinces, medlars, and figs. 
You w^ill make seven heaps, putting apples with apples, pears 
with pears, etc. You w^ill separate the heaps each into second- 
ary heaps, if there are varieties in the apples, pears, plums, 
etc. You will put ^he rambours together, the pippins together, 
and so on. The idea fruit which refers to all the apples, pears, 
plums, etc., of the whole heap is called a genus. The ideas ap- 
ple, pear, prune, etc., which directed in the formation of the 
seven secondary heaps, are species. The qualities rambours, 
pippins, etc., are inferior species. The fruits that make up the 
classes are called individuals. 

157. Your fruits thus classed, if you desire to examine them, 
to see which are full-grown, w- hich are sound, w^hich are spoiled, 
your labor becomes far more easy than when they w^ere all 
mingled confusedly together. If a merchant who has fifteen 
hundred varieties of merchandise, did not take care to classify 
them, how could he distinguish them in his store? Eighty 
thousand words are ranged in alphabetical order in a dictionary : 
in an instant we find the one we wish. Classifications are ne- 
cessary in the labor of observation. They introduce order and 



42 



method among our ideas, and prevent tlie ifimd from becoming 
lost in details, and aid the memory to retain them. 

158. I meet a bhick man with thick lips. The color of this 
man is a consequence of great heat and dryness in the climate ; 
it necessarily belongs to every man subjected to the influences 
of the same causes. I draw a conclusion: I say: ''All the 
inhabitants of ^^^ubia, the country to which this individual be- 
longs, are black." This is an induction ; an inductive judg- 
ment. 

159. I know by geography that all ISTubians are black. The 
arrival of a N^ubian is announced to me. Therefore I go to see 
a black man. This act of my mind is a deductive judgment, a 
deduction, otherwise styled reasoning, argument. There are 
many sorts of arguments : the syllogism, the prosyllogism, the 
dilemma, the enthymeme, the epicherema, sorites, the disjunc- 
tive argument, the conditional. A series of arguments to bring 
out a truth is called a demonstration. 

160. Induction and deduction are a combination of judgments. 
What is the judgment itself ? I am holding au orange. I see 
it under the aspect rendered by the adjective yellow. I see 
that the modality is inherent in the object orange, that the two 
are bound together, united. Then my miud announces to itself 
the existence of this union, announces to itself that this mode 
or quality should be affirmed of the object orange. This act is 
a judgment. Judgments are false, mistaken, precipitate. Men 
are judicious. Judgment is correct. 

161. Mental affirmation is closely allied. It is the judgment 
expressed by inward speech. The comprehension of an idea is 
the sum of the partial ideas that make it up. The ideas of 
root, trunk, branches, leaves, bark, are the comprehension of the 
idea tree. The extension of an idea is the sum of the individuals 
to which it extends. All trees are the extension of the idea tree. 
After having made the judgment that the mode or quality yel- 
low resides in the object orange, that is to say, that the idea 
yellow is embraced in the comprehension of the idea of orange, 
or that the idea orange is embraced in the extension of the idea 
yellow, 1 say to myself: '' The orange is yellow." 

162. Believing follows seeing and judging. The mind clings, 
attaches itself to the thing seen ; that is belief. 

163. The different words, appreciate, award, deem, approve, 
disapprove, suspect, presume, pretend, dread, opine, esteem, 
decide, condemn, prognosticate, augur, conjecture, etc., indicate 
as many judgments. Error is a judgment that carries astray 
from the truth. Prejudice is a judgment without certainty. — 
Sunk, buried in prejudice. — One who has no opinion of his own. 



43 



1G4. To hope, despair, expect, wait for, count upon, faith, confi- 
dence signify the fact of helieving. To doubt is to believe im- 
perfectly. It is well to believe and judge only upon certainty. 
Let us judge and believew to be true what we are certain +o be 
true ; let us judge and believe to be false what is false on con- 
viction, assurance, persuasion, certainty. — Misbelieve, credulous, 
superstitious. 

165. We are certain of a thing when we see it with a sound 
mind, with calmness, composure, clearly, in such a light that 
our assent is irresistibly commanded, is necessitated. Such is 
the certainty that we have of our existence, of the reality of 
our bodies, of our house, our purse, of the sun, of the moon. 
If we have but a partial view of things, if it is not impossible 
to refrain from believing them, as it is impossible for us to deny 
our existence, we have only a probability. Probability has its 
degrees. It is proper then to admit a doubt, which is more or 
less strong according as the probability is more or less strong. 
If we judge and -believe inconsiderately, we move like blind 
men over the narrow paths of duty, liable to meet with as many 
falls as we shall form judgments and beliefs. 

166. Will in the strict sense, or free will, spontaneity, is the 
faculty of originating volition. Let a father say to his son, I 
wish you to obey," he originates a volition. A scholar decides 
to study Latin, he originates a volition. My neighbor formed 
the resolution to drown himself — this mental operation is a 
volition. Different volitions. Acquiescence, longing, choice, 
command, consent, prohibition, design, intention, option, order, 
project, plan, ratification, renunciation, desire, resignation, 
wish, vote, vow, voice, acceptance, adoption, retusal, con- 
tract, etc. 

167. It is well to wish the existence of good, the non-ex- 
istence of bad, the performance of duties. It is bad to wish the 
existence of bad, the non-existence of good, the violation of 
duties. 

168. Volition is an important fact, for it precedes all our 
other operations. A feeble will is pliant, unsteady, changing, 
variable, unstaid, vacillating, wavering, versatile, and makes a 
a man undecided, irresolute, fickle, unstable, flighty, incon- 
stant, without charter, but a weather-cock, a puppet, a ma- 
chine, a dolt, a whirligig, a dancing-jack. If a will is strong in 
its bad volitions, it is vicious, and draws down upon its posses- 
sor the epithets pertinacious, heady, stubborn, obstinate, self- 
willed, head-strong, opinionated, despotic, imperious, wayward, 
contrary, positive. — Velleity. 

169. As respects good volitions, it is Avell that the will should 



44 



be strong, firm, immovable, iinsbaken, steadfast, of iron, like 
adamant, invincible. Then it makes men determined, decided, 
men of heart, of resolution, of consistency, of constancy, up- 
right, men of mark, tried, reliable, masculine and virile, souls. 

170, Activity in regard to the understanding is subject to the 
same cause of strength and weakness as activity in relation to 
the heart. — Psychology. — Logic. 



THE BODY. 

171. In the body we must distinguish passive and active 
principles, or passivity and activity. The first comprises the 
modalities that reside in the body in a permanent manner, and 
the second, movements and positions. 

PASSIVITY. 

THE GOOD AND EVIL. 

172. Let us premise that the good dispositions and 
operations of the mind give a good, and agreeable expres- 
sion to the body, and the bad likewise extend their influence 
to the exterior, rendering it ugly, disagreeable. This is 
what is called a good expression, in spite of all physical 
deformity, a bad expression, notwithstanding all corpo- 
real perfection. It is a common proverb : That's fair enough, 
that's good enough. The expression or air may have almost as 
many descriptive epithets as the soul may exhibit dispositions, 
and habits : Abstracted, occupied, attentive, calm, wandering, 
pensive, preoccupied, daring, dreamy, meditative, assured, 
majestic, imposing — Agitated, downcast, wild, alarmed, embar- 
rassed, icy, mincing, sheepish, horrified. An aspect is pitiful, 
pinched, boorish, miserable, suspicious, sinister, forbidding. 
The countenance is the mirror of the soul. These principles 
have given occasion to physiognomy. 

173. The Parts of the Body. Head-peaked, flat, thick, 
hanging. Head round, oblong, oval, right. — Head heavy, grow- 
ing grey, bald, deprived of hair. Hair dishevelled, red, red- 
dish, clotted, stiflT, greasy, thin, bristling, yellow, woolly, dirty, 
nitty, rough in every direction, twisted and tangled. — Cropped, 
crop-eared. Notched. Black hair, raven, blond, brown, 
golden, thick, bushy, crisped, silky, glossy, smooth, abundant, 
curly, flowing, streaming, plaited, matted, frizzled, combed, 
free from scurf and vermin. Long-haired. 

174. Eyes small, deep-set, closed, not matched, red, blear, 
blood-shot, dull, large and protruding, turned np, hollow, hag- 
gard, agonizing, dying, heavy, Avithout lashes, swollen, weeping. 



45 



One-eyed. Odd-eyecl. Owl-eyed. Squint-eyed. Monoctilaf. 
Nic^lit-blind. Blindness and cecity. Dimness of sight. Pnr- 
blind. Myope. — Eyes high, open, blue, sparkling, large, bluish^ 
radiant, clear, lustrous, keen, shining. Argus-eyed. Lynx- 
eyed. Long sight. Beetle-browed* 

175. Nose thick, sharp, too ^niall, flat, low, snub, snlvelly^ 
twisted, crushed, hooked, stopped, stinking. Pug-nosed. 

Ears long, short, dull. Lobes like a funnel. Deafness. — • 
Quick ears. 

Mouth wide, twisted, drivelling, foaming, gaping, sharpy 
fetid. Thick-lipped. Hare-lipped. Blobber-lipped. 

176. Teeth dirty, set-on-edge, sharp, decayed, broken, loose, 
brittle, worn, wide apart, irregular. Incisives, broad. Snag- 
tooth. Gap-toothed. Toothless. — Teeth entire, solid, sound^ 
white, clean and regular. Enamel. 

Neck wry, long, short. Stiff-necked. Goitre. Throat open, 
close. Thick in tlie neck. Shoulders narrow, ill-matclied. 
Shoulders matched, broad. Back humped, stooping, — -straight* 
broad-backed. 

177. One-armed. Left-handed. — Ambidextrous. Eight- 
handed. Arms equal and symmetrical, round. Hand flat^ 
large, chapped, kibed, lame, benumbed ; — small fat, white. 

Breast sunken, narrow,— full, deep. 

Hips and abdomen. Full contour of the body with round 
outlines. 

178. Legs spindle-shaped, crooked, turned out or in, bowled, 
twisted, amputated, ill-matched, too small or too large with 
reference to the body. One-legged. Bandy-legged. Crook- 
kneed. Halt. Stump of a leg. 

Legs equal, symmetrical. Thighs and calf of the leg brawny 
and prominent. Fine-limbed. 

Foot twisted ; club foot ; flat-footed. Ankle bony. Corns. 
Callosities. Tip of the foot too much turned in or out. Splay- 
footed. 

179. Face sunburnt, wan, sallow, i)iinpled, bloated, scarlet, 
copper-colored, blotched, pock-marked, discolored, distorted, 
haggard, faded, weather-beaten, blood-stained, fanrished, puffy, 
thin, painted, pitted, withered, tanned, cheeked, livid, dull, 
black, leaden, wrinkled, superannuated, sanguine, freckled, tat- 
tooed, cadaverous. Phiz ruddy. Countenance sanctimonious, 
square, sunken, aching, bloodless, swarthy, bristling, melan- 
choly, broad, imbrowned, sombre, hairy. Features shrunken, 
irregular, contracted. Forehead low, furrowed, care-worn, 
haughty. The countenance is likewise disfigured by eruptions, 



46 



flaflv spits, sear, marks left by wounds, bruises, cuts, gashes. 
Monkey-faced. Red faced. Dog-faced. Hard-favored. 

180. Countenance bright, sliining, gay, serene, radiant, open, 
sunny. Forehead high, broad. Face fair, fresh, delicate, full, 
shubby, martial. Lineaments — prominent, regular. Keck of 
alabaster. Complexion clear, bjooming, ruddy. Cheeks rosy, 
soft, blushing. Profile well*defined. To be well-favored. 

181 THE WHOLE BODY. 



Good Epithets. Stature — 
Thick-set, square, slim, slender, 
tall, commanding. 

Constitution— Healthy, nerv- 
ous, robust, strong, energetic, 
of precocious growth. 

Man— Corpulent, able-bodied, 
large, lusty, hale, muscular, 
fat, close-knit. Frame massive, 
well-balanced. Woman— round, 
with soft outline. 

Skin— -White, smooth to the 
touch. Flesh brimful. Juve- 
nility. Plumpness. Vigorous 
health. Happy temperament. 
Brawniness. 

A colossus, a giant, a Hercu- 
les. 

Beard — well-trimmed. IN'ails 
pared. Cleanness of the head, 
of the face, of the ears, of the 
mouth, of the hands, of the 
feet, of the whole body. 



Bad Ejnfhets. Stature — • 
Small, lean, lank, angular. 
Constitution — Delicate, frail, 
fragile, ruined, sickly, bony. 

Man — deformed, spare, ill- 
built, big-bellied, replete, 
shrunken, meagre, gaunt, de- 
crepit, ailing, uncleanly fat. 

Excrescence. Obesity. Ma- 
rasmus. Skin — Rough, warty, 
hard, greasy, sweaty, oily. 
Flesh — Spongy, flabby, glandu- 
lar. 

Body — Emaciated, stunted, 
shrivelled, wasted. 

Woman — Masculine, tawny, 
flabby-breasted. 

Abortion. Dwarf. Puppit. 
Squalty. Pigmy. Paunchy. 
Cripple. Embryo. Carcass. 
Fright. Ugly creature. Mum- 
my. Monster. Trumpery, 
Dumpy. Spectre. Skeleton. 
Virago. Ronion. Scrag. Grub. 



The forms connected with the shape, structure, texture of the 
interior of the body are the object of physiology to which 
anatomy introduces us. The derangements that occur in the 
human system, and the means of remedying them are the 
object of medicine and surgery, which therefore together con- 
stitute one of the most important branches of general morality. 
Two hundred varieties of disease are enumerated. It is useless, 
as it is impossible, for every one to go through a course of medical 
study. But there are numerous causes of disease which we daily 
ourselves furnish without noticing them, or which we do not 
prevent ; certain maladies may remedy themselves without the 



47 



aid of a physician, who is not always within our reach ; fre- 
quently we do not know liow to conduct ourselves w^hen suffer- 
ing from disease, nor to yield ohedience to physicians. Here is 
a Held for the healing art accessible to all the world, and 
interesting to everybody. 

DISEASES, 

182. General Diseases. — Inflammation, dropsy^ cancer, 
tubercle, scrofula, constitutional syphilis, bronchocele and cre- 
tinism, hyperhoemia, anoemia, leucocythemia, cellulitis vene- 
nata, rheumatism, gout. FsvEks.— Continued fever, common 
continued fever, typhus and typhoid fever, plague, intermittent 
fever, quotidian, tertian, quartan fever^ remittent fever, simple 
remittent fever, infantile fever, yellow fever, eruptive fevers, 
small pox, cow pox, chicken pox, measles, scarlet fever. Dis- 
eases OF THE J^ERYous System. — Inflammation of the brain, 
acute hydrocephalus, chronic hydrocephalus, apoplexy, concus- 
sion of the" brain, coup de Soliel, delirium tremens, insanity, 
cephalalgia, diseases of the spinal cord, paralysis, epilepsy, 
hysteria, catalepsy, ecstacy, chorea, tetanus, hydj^phobia, 
neuralgia. Diseases of the Organs of RespirMion and 
Circulation. — Catarrh, laryngitis, croup, laryngismus stridulus, 
dysphonia clericorum, bronchitis, influenza, pertussis, or hoop- 
ing cough, asthma, emphysema, pleurisy, pneumonia, phthisis, 
cancer of the lung, pericarditis, endocarditis, carditis, diseases 
of the valves of the heart, angina pectoris, hypertrophy of the 
heart, atrophy of the heart, cyanccis, rupture of the heart, 
aneurism of the heart. Diseases of the Organs of Diges- 
tion. — Glossitis, gangrgena oris, apthas, cynanche, paranparoti- 
doea, cynanche parotidoea, cynanche tonsillaris, diseases of the 
oesophagus, dispepsia, hcematemesis, gastritis, ulcer of the 
stomach, cancer of the stomach, dilatation of the stomach, ente- 
ritis, colic, diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, obstruction of the 
bowels, intestinal worms. Diseases of the Liyer, Panereas 
AND Spleen. — Inflammation of the liver, cirrhosis, fatty dege- 
neration of the liver, cancer of the liver, hydatid tumours of 
the liver, jaundice, diseases of the pancreas, diseases of the 
spleen. Diseases of the Peritoneum and Oeian, Dropsy, 
etc. — Peritonitis, ascitis, ovarian dropsy, tabes mesenterica. 
Diseases of the Kidneys, Supeaeenal, Capsules and Blad- 
DEE. — Nephritis, acute desquamative nephritis, chronic des- 
quamative nephritis, fatty degeneration of the kidneys, gravel, 
suppression of urine, diatetis, cancer of the kidney, hoematuria, 
disease of the supra-renal capsules, irritability of the bladder, 



48 



spasm of' the bladder^ paralysis of the bladder, inflammation 
of the bladder. Diseases of the Skin. — Exanthemata, ery- 
thema, erysipelas, roseola, urticaria, heemorragia, purpura, 
scurvy, vesiculge, sudamina, herpes, eczema, bullae, pemphigus, 
rupia, button scurvy, pustul^e, ecthyma, impetigo, equinia, para- 
sitici, tinea tonsurans, tinea favosa, tinea decalvans, tinea lyco- ; 
sis, plica polonica. chloasma, scabies, papulae, lichen, prurigo, ; ' 
squamae, lepra, psoriasis, pityriasis, ichthyosis, tubercula, ele- 
phantiasis, molluscum, achne, lupus, framboesia, keloid, maculfe, ' 
nigrities, lentigo, ephelis, albinismus and vitiligo. Diseases of • • 
THE Eye. — Impaired vision, inflammation of conjunction, in- ■ ' 
flamraation of sclerotica, inflammation of cornea, inflamma- ; 
tion of iris, inflammation of chloroid, inflammation of retinas, j ! 
amaurosis. Diseases cf the Ear. — Otalgia, otitis, otorrhoea. ; 
Diseases of the Blood-Yessels. — Aortitis, aortic pulsation, 
aneurism of the aorta, phlebitis, phlegmasia dolens. 

cokpoPvEal activity. 

THE GOOD AND EVxL. 

183. HI do not understand that this activity is a power I 
peculiar to the body, immediately exercised by it. Like the 
other two, its.principle is the me^ the soul which makes use of 
the body as of an instrument. There is no part of the system 
which the me cannot move, except the hair. Movement is the 
sum total of tiie body, or a part of the body, coming into rela- 
tion successively with different points of space, or passing from 
one point of space to another. Paralysis, immobility, inflexi- 
bility, rigidity, tg be crippled, are opposed to corporeal 
activity. 

184. The strength and development of physical activity are 
manifested in the celerity, tension, promptness, dispatch, vehe- 
mence, lightness, impetuosity, solidity, rapidity, suppleness, 
velocity, and ease of the movements ; and the acting principle 
is then called lively, sprightly, alert, lithe, agile, nimble, un- 
constrained, forward, smart, brisk, active. 

185. Corporeal weakness is heavy, tardy, slow, inactive, 
tender, wavering. Its causes are hunger, debility, inaction, 
enervation, eff'eminacy, disease, caducity; all the causes of a 
deficiency of activity relative to the heart ; and the states indi- 
cated by the words lax, soft, dull, flabby, maimed, drowsy, im- 
potent, invalid, broken, lame, dislocated. 

186. A man becomes constrained, grave, strained, aflfected, 
awkward, disconcerted, simpering, displeasing, when inward 



49 



embarrassfnents, vanity, or any other cause, obstructs the out- 
ward operations, and have deprived them of ease and natural- 
ness. The strength of the body depends especially upon mus- 
cles and a regular conformation. Sleep calls nightly repose, 
which is a powerful restorative of the energies weakened by 
the labors of the day. But excess in sleep enervates. The same 
is true of food. 

187. To remove the causes of weakness, to arouse and apply 
the causes of strength, to attempt and repeat the same move- 
ments, to inure and break one's self to them are also the means 
of augmenting corporeal activity. 

188. Movements are very numerous. They derive their 
grace and perfection from the graces and perfections of the 
mind. ^' A dunce neither comes in, nor goes out,'' says M. 
de la Bruyere, "neither sits down, nor rises up, nor stands on 
his feet like a man of sense." 

189. A few systems of movements give occasion to arts. 
Hence we have pantomime, fencing, equitation, oplomachy, 
dancing, wrestling, gymnics, swimming, gymnastics, chiro- 
nomy, etc. 

190. Walking. In walking it is well that the body should 
be erect, without stiffness, the head straight with the back, 
that the arms should hang down naturally, that the body should 
press on the loins, and the sole of the foot on the ground, that 
the legs should move alternatively alike, not by leaps aod 
jumps, and the breast be perpendicular to the horizontal line of 
movement. It is bad to walk with one's nose in the air, with 
arms swinging, with a stiff back, with one's hat on the back of 
the head, with a wriggle, with a waddle, traipsingly, trippingly, 
with a sidling gait ; to walk crookedly, zig-zag, slackly, to kick 
about, to hobble, to drag one's limbs. — A proud, bounding, airy 
step. Velocipede. To trudge, to glide, to skate, to slide, to 
shudder, to tremble. Cramp. Tic-douioureux. 

191. Respiration is free, long, or short, embarrassed, or stifled. 
To gasp, to pant. Breathless, out of breath. To rattle. To 
cough without stopping. Hiccough. 

192. It is well to laugh at what is laughable. To laugh with- 
out reason is the characteristic of a fool ; at evil, at misfortune, 
is the part of a wicked man ; immoderately, loudly, is that of 
a simpleton. To smile, smirk. Sardonic smile. 

To go to bed silently, respectfully, decently, promptly ; to 
rise in the same way. 

193. To sit down sedately. To sit erect in one's chair, with 
the hands disposed of naturally before one, with the legs side 
by side, making a little more than a right angle at the knees. 



50 



It is bad to cross tlie legs, to separate them too widely ; to 
balance one's self on one's chair; to lean it back; to make it 
whirl about; to lean one's elbow over the back. 

It is a great weakness to complain, to weep, to sigh, to sob, 
to lament, to groan for slight canses. 

194. The eyes are the focus of the spiritual energy. To aim^ 
to leer, to peer^ to ogle, indicate certain peculiarities of observa- 
tion by the eyes. A glance is piercing, sharp, mild, sparkling, 
angry, flaming, lightning, stealthy, downward, magnetic, of an 
eagle, — unsteady, wandering, glassy. A glance is inquisitive, 
tell-tale, scrutinizing, steady. It is bad to gape, to stare, to 
wink, to twinkle, to blink, to half close the eyes. Crabbed 
look. To wrinkle the nose, to pucker the mouth, to sneeze 
and to blow one's nose loudly and with effort, to blow one's 
nose with one's fingers, then to wipe it on one's sleeve, on one's 
dress (a woman), to breath through the nostrils, to snuffle, 
to snore, to swallow the saliva, expectoration, to chew, to eject 
excretions upon furniture, walls, curtains, through a window, 
salivation, are bad and filthy deeds. It is bad to hawk, to spit 
often, to roll one's tongue in the month, to bite it as well as the 
lips, to lick the lips, to gnaw one's nails with the teeth, to puff, 
to play monkey. Sputterer. 

195. To take snuff. To smoke. 

To gnash, to clatter, to grate the teeth, to crack one's fingers, 
to have them in the mouth, the nose, the ears, in the hair, to 
free it of vermin, is bad. 

196. The position and arrangement of all the parts of the 
body as they are exerted and maintained by the activity, are 
called posture, habit, attitude, mien, deportment, carriage, 
bearing. The scholar who, in his class should keep one leg ex- 
tended on the bench, the other drawn under him, and his breast 
leaning against the table, would exhibit an ugly posture. If 
be were seated on the bench as on a chair, with his arms 
advanced half-way on the table, he would exhibit a good 
posture. 

A deportment, a mien is bold, terrible, etc. Two armies 
about to rush upon one another, are in a fierce attitude. The 
totality of one's movements and attitudes is expressed in the 
words manner, appearance. Manners sometimes signify good 
movements and bearing. That man has no manners. Ap- 
pearance, expression, figure, exterior, often expresses in a word 
all the qualities of corporeal passivity, and activity. Thus he 
is a man of figure. 

Morality as it concerns the threefold organs of sex, speech, 
and stomach, deserves to be considered apart. 



51 



SEX. 

107. All iiidividnals in the veixetnLle nnd <sninial kirijjflom 
spring up, live, and p(.rish. S|)cci! M alone siihsi^l luM-pcl nnlly. 
They would themselves soon be extinirnislied if indlvidnnls hnd 
not the power of reprodncins^ tlieniseives : the <iloho would 
soon be but a vast solitude, without verdure and n ithont inhjibi- 
tants. Tiiat portion of ourselves which is the fountain of our 
existence is sacred and noble, and demands respect. 

198. In order that the use of our faculties nniy have a good 
quality, these latter must be at their complete development 
and healthy, and they should be exercised without excess and to 
the end intended by nature, tlie birth, education, and hap])i- 
ness of children, circumstances, wdiicli are attainable only in 
marriage. In all other cases evil results. 

199. Immodesty. Lewdness, Prostitution. Wanton girl. 
Loose woman. Kape and ravishment. Libertine. Kakehall— 
Chaste, pure, modest. 

SPEECH. 

200. The theory t)f sound, of acoustics or phonics, belongs to 
physics, physiology and psychology. Articulat<kl and organ- 
ized sounds furnish us with speech and music, which are often 
but one. Music, as a branch of general ethics treated by itself, 
does not concern us. Speech is an admirable invention. How 
contracted would be the grasp of our intellect, if it embraced 
only Avhat it has penetrated by itself. The condition of deaf 
mutes shows that without speech, we should be on the verge 
of idiocy. The ancient languages comprehend between fifty and 
sixty thousand words. The French and English languages count 
about a hundred thousand. 

201. Thirty- three living and dead languages : German, 
Georgian, Greek, Arabian, English, Armenian, Celtic, Chaldean, 
Ciiinese, Coptic, Esclavic, Danish, Slavonian, Spanish, Ethiopian, 
Finnish, French, Hebrew, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Malay, Musco- 
vite, Persian, Polish, Portugese, Samaritan, Sanscrit, Siamese, 
Sw^edish, Tamoul Thibetain, Turkish. Around these several 
languages well-established dialects are grouped by thousands, 
and jargons which are corruptions of them more or less exten- 
sive ; a hideous leprosy, which is the indication, the patrial 
symbol, and in part the cause of limited intelligence, and a 
hindrance to communication, to national unity, an evil which 
governments should combat to the uttermost. If dilference 
among languages is one of the primary causes of the homo- 
geneity and indestructibility of people, the world has taken a 
great deal of trouble to have difl[erent words for the same things. 



52 



202. It is shameful to be ijxnorant of one's true language, and to 
be capable of uttering only the terms of a gross vulgarism which 
are like the toads which the poor girl ca^-t forth, who had been 
smitten by a fairy enchantress. It is no less shameful to be 
ignorant, when it has been in one's power to learn them, of the 
principles of one^g language. In the first case, one does not 
speak it at all; in the second, one speaks it ill. In conse- 
quence, one is condemned to keep aloof during life from edu- 
cated and refined people, whom one fears to oftend, and whose 
secret contempt one dreads. "We speak erery day; if we know 
how to conduct our speech properly, we experience a constant 
pleasure ; if we are not sure of ourselves, we are involved in au 
embarrassment that incessantly recurs. To learn a language 
easily and rapidly, we must unite conversation with tlie study 
of grammar under the direction of a master. Speech is ex- 
tended and perpetuated by writing, which represents it as it 
represents ideas, and the knowledge of whicli is reading. 
Language in its threefold aspect of speech^ vvriting and reading, 
is regulated, settled, and treated of by grammar, lexicography, 
poeticsj literature, rhetoric and logic. The other kinds of lan- 
guage are those of emblems, of mutes, of gesture, and chiro- 
nomy. Aphony, baryphony, dysphony. 

203. Qualities of speech as regards sound. It is subject to 
the same intluence of strength and weakness as other activities. 
It is admirably impressed with the character of the sentiments 
it transmits in persons whom it affects more profoundly than 
any other mode of expression. The voice is silvery, clear, 
sweet, soft, shrill, free, harmonious, sharp, metallic, mellow, 
ing, stentorian, quavering, thundering. — Low, cracked, caver- 
piercing, penetrating, full, resounding and sonorous, roar- 
nous, hollow, squalling, discordant, hard, hoarse, inaudible, 
throttled, thick, broken, slender, Hute-like, strained, humming, 
squeaking, harsh, guttural, dying, rough, sepulchral, heavy, 
strident, tremulous, disguised. Voice of a drunkard. Sharp 
intonations. Cry of alarm, very high, plaintive, heart-rending, 
sorrowful, mournful, unctuous accents. A tone that is haughty, 
dry, short, affected, languid, abrupt, dignified, icy, decisive, in- 
cisive, persuasive, indecisive, affectionate. 

204. Vices in the utterance of the sounds of language. 

To stammer, jabber, lisp, sputter, tremble, squall, gibber, 
spout, sing in reading or conversation, to become hoarse, to 
tire one's lungs, to speak thick, mumble, murmur, growl, 
drawl, roar, rant, bawl, vociferate, Brogue, twang. To speak 
a broken language. 

205. Vices in the expression of the ideas. That of an allego- 



53 



rizer, chatter, talker, dogmatiser, mysterious, plirase-rnonger, 
preacher, prolix, pnrist, repeater, tale-hearer, sermonizer, sen- 
tentious. To ramble, repeat over and over, to pass from one 
thing to another, to be verbose. Amphibology, ambiguity, 
cock-and-bull story, barbarism, tautok^gy. novelty, pleonasm, 
redundancy, phrases twisted, high-flown and incoherent. Style 
tumid, turgid, emphatic. Whipped cream. Solecism, verbal 
catiK'lysm. Phraseology, cant. One who speaks continually lo 
himself. 

206. Expression is clear, lucid, distinct, precise, neat, simple, 
laconic, natural, succinct, correct, eloquent. 

2*07. Faults in the speech as regards the things signified. To 
use sophistry, parody; to utter jeremiads, idle stories, medleys, 
quibbles, gossip, slurs, hotch-potch, bragging, idle talk, com- 
mon-place, trash, trifling, bouncers, trifles, nonsense, fibs, jests, 
gasconade, oaths and imprecations, untruths and falsehoods, 
stupidities, plays upon Avords, stufl' trivialities, loose and inde- 
corous language, without meaning, inconsistent, filthy, dirty, 
unclean, words obscene, indecent, absurd, silly, smutty, in- 
sipid. 

208. To disclose secrets. To use s?.urrilous language, talk 
egotistically, cavil, dream, stand on triflas. To speak ab hoc et 
ab lidc. A babbler, prater, tittle- tattler, prattler, tattler, fabri- 
cator, chatter-box, newsmonger, punster, speech maker, parrot, 
dotard, s ibtiliser, indiscreet. A magpie. Fluent. Witticisms, 
atticism, point, salt, sally, quaint sayings. Special talents, imita- 
tion, ventriloquism. 

209. The first and fairest attribute of our discotirse is to be 
truthful. Falsehood is poison, the death of the intellect; truth 
is its aliment, which explains why we experience so strong an 
emotion of disgust for the liar. 

THE PARTAKING OF FOOD. 

210. Finally, from the influence of the elements upon us, 
chiefly caloric and air, constant emanations escape from our 
body. Our lives would soon cease without a restorative prin- 
ciple. At birth, we have hardly the twentieth, the thirtieth, 
etc., of the bulk we are destined to have. The principle de- 
signed by the creator to develop the body, and repair its losses, 
is nourishment. We are admonished of the need of nourish- 
ment by hunger and thirst, by the diminution of strength, 
which are powerful wants themselves to be repelled by food. 
Besides these results of food, it produces a delight which 
invites us to partake it. W' e eat every day three or lour times. 



54 



The partaking of food performs a o-reat pare m our existence ; 
it is important then to know what is good and wliat is evil 
in it. 

211. It is well that the arms reach forth npon the table as far 
as the wrist, aw] that the body be a little distant from it and 
parallel to it. The knife, the spoon, and fork, are placed on 
the right ; the bread on the left. The spoon is Jield between 
the thumb, the forehnger and the large linger, forming a right 
angle witli the fore-arm. The fork is held between the thumb 
and tlie other finger slightly bent, is turned downward to take 
food, and raised up agaiu to reach the mouth, without the form 
of any determinate angle with the arip. The left hand liolds 
it, while the right is used to cut np the food. Bread and meat 
always require to be cut neatly iuto little pieces. It is wrong 
to carry bread to the mouth witli a full hand, or held between the 
knife aud tlie tlinmb, to bite into fruit, or a slice of bread, or meat, 
or take the latter, or every other greasy food with the fingers. 
The body, while eating, is slightly bent, and the mouth does 
not advance to meet the food, which the hand has to bring' to 
it. Careless children willingly let sauce fall on their coat-col- 
lar, their vests, their sacks, the table-cloth. As soon as the 
mouth is besmeared, it is promptly wiped with a napkin. 

212. It is wrong in masticating to make a noise with the lips 
and teeth, to keep the mouth shut, to suck one's greasy fingers, 
to slabber, to fill the mouth too full. The knife never goes to 
the mouth, and never takes anything in a dish. Neither the 
fork nor spoon is ever introduced into the common dish, 
where it would be very wrong to fumble about as well as in 
o tie's own plate. 

213. Dry food is taken with the fingers except salt and pep- 
per. It is wrong to throw on the Hoor, under the table, or to 
lay on the table cloth, the fragments or skins which, on the 
contrary, are gathered in a corner on the plate; to spit out 
little bones, stones, and seeds, instead of laying them with the 
ends of the fingers on the plate ; to help one's self, or suffer one's 
self to be helped to more than one can eat. The viands are 
arranged symmetrically on the table. Dishes and plates are 
removed, when eatins: is finished, in order not to have a pell- 
mell of clean and unclean dishes. 

214. It is wrong to heap up food on one's plate, to wipe the 
fork, or greasy knife upon the bread, after the table cloth, instead 
of the napkin ; to drink broth from a plate ; to pour it into a 
spoon ; to suck it up (it is to be dip])ed up with the spoon) ; to 
blow upon food to cool it ; to taste twice of a spoonful ; to 
gnaw at bones ; to clean one's teeth with the knife. It is well 



55 



to hold a ti'lass by tlie extremity of tlie tliumb and of the two 
first fingers^ wliilst the ring and the little linger are placed be- 
neath it; to wipe the month before and after drinking. Food 
being well-mar^ticated, the digestion of it becomes more easy. 

215. The pleasures which nature has conjoined with eating 
of food are the cause of the abuse we make of it. The streams 
in growing clear, throw upon their banks tlie impurities they 
contain; thus the soul cleansed and rehned by science, gets rid 
of its gross appetites. Education is then the best remedy to be 
employed against gluttony and intemperance. There are few 
intemperate persons among educated people. In tlie period be- 
tween the ages seventeen and twenty-five, the bulwark against 
intemperance must be planted and strengthened, namely sobri- 
ety. Sobriety once established at twenty -five, a man is saved; 
wine, after thirst is satisfied, is as i-epugnant to him as a medi- 
cine. Intemperance master of the place at that age never 
abandons it. 

EPITHETS WHICH APPLY TO THE WHOLE PEESON. 

216. Bad. Man bulky, carnal, coarse, comical, currish, earthly, 
eccentric, green, ill-mannered, mystic, nameless, odd, rough, 
sensual, sorry, uncouth, wild, Avorn-out. 

Abigail, automaton, baby, baggage, barbarian, barelegs, beg- 
gar, blackguard, blockhead, boor, brat, brute, buftoon, child, clan, 
clodliopper, clodpoll, clout, clown, cockney, codger, coquette^ 
cotquean, cowherd, crab, dawdler, dog, doll, dowdi, dragon, 
dregs of the people, dullard, dunce, filthy fellow, fop, fox, fribble r, 
gawk, giddy-brain, good -for- naught, green horn, grub, grubber, 
harlequin, herd, hodman, hog, hord, horse, hunks, idiot, jack- 
dandy, jack-pudding. Jade, knave, loggerhead, lout, lubber, luna- 
tic, maniac, man-of-straw, marmoset, Merry Andrew, inollicot, 
monomaniac, mountebank, niggard, ninny, nobody, nothing, 
old fogy, pariah, pandour pate, pedant, poor wretch, populace, 
pretender, prostitute, prude, punch, rabble, ragamuftin, recluse, 
rifi-ratF, savage, scullion, scrub, shadow, sibyl, simpleton, slat- 
tern, sloven, slut, snob, statue, sweepings, swineherd, tantalus, 
toad, trash, trollop, urchin, vagabond, varlet, wench, vermin, 
whirlbrain. 

Good. A man who is adult, precocious, mature, sedate, 
deliberate, serious, grave. A soul of steel, celestial. A man of 
iron, of means, of talent, of weight, of worth, of value, of 
merit. An amazon, an accomplished man, a finished, refined 
man. A great man. 

217. The question of suicide is decided like that of homicide. 



56 



CONTINUATION OF OUR OBLIGATIONS 
TOWARDS INANIMATE NATURE. 

218. We cannot develop our being, sustain our existence, 
supply all our wants, without the concurrence of external ob- 
jects; hence there arise certain duties. That which in their 
essence, their states, qualities and properties is a fact in cre- 
ation, is asked of natural history, of physics, of chemistry ; 
that w^hich is a fact in man, gives action to the industrial arts. 

We shall set forth : 1. A nomenclature of the industrial arts, 
follow'ed by considerations in regard to the choice of a voca- 
tion, and labor ; 2. The means of acquiring articles of pro- 
perty ; 3. Their general qualities; 4. The means of preserving 
them. 

1. KOMEXCLATUEE OF THE IXDUSTEIAL AETS. 

219. Art of needle-maker, awl-maker, button-maker, starch- 
maker, trunk-maker, truss-maker, boat-maker, toy-maker har- 
ness-maker, purse-maker, Eddie-string maker, brush-maker, 
card-maker (play), card-maker, coach-maker, paste-board- 
maker, cap-maker, sash, belt-maker, chain-maker, chair-maker, 
boot and shoe-maker, chocolate-maker, rope-maker, mantua- 
maker, cabinet-maker, pin-maker, spur-maker, fan-maker, 
ferrandine-maker, last-maker, fringe-maker, sheath-maker, kce- 
maker, gauze-maker, clock, watch-maker, lantern-maker, box- 
maker, lemonade-maker, lute-maker, edge-tool-maker, mattress- 
maker, mill-stone-mnker, mustard-maker, mat-maker, wafer- 
maker, parchment-maker, paper-maker, comb-maker, vermicelli- 
maker, perruke-maker, stove-maker, saltpetre-maker, salt- 
maker, heel-maker, drum-maker, soap-maker, terrace-maker, 
wooden-shoe-maker, tile, brick-maker, basquet-maker, vinegar- 
maker, blanket-maker, chain-maker, bead-maker, serge-maker, 
bell-maker, gun-powder-maker, match-maker, gimlet-maker, 
spectacle-maker, muff-maker, mirror-maker, ecclesiastical or- 
nament maker. 

The arts of the apothecary (pharmacian), aeronaut, silver- 
smith, armorer, land-surveyor, banker, jeweler, bleacher, 
launder (ironing), hosier, butcher, scavenger, baker, brewer, 
binder, knitter, embroiderer, wood- cutter, coffee-man, carder, 
pavier, quarry-man, chandler, wax-chandler, carpenter, wheel- 
wright, tinker, brasier, lime-burner, rag picker, chemist, nailer, 
colorist, street porter, confectioner, currier, cutler, drawer, 
scourer, distiller, liquorist, gilder, clothier, publisher, journal- 
ist, enameler, grinder, tinman, figurist, spinster, spinner, money- 



57 



lender, florist, founder (caster) blacksmith, flaX-dresser, sword^* 
cntler, hatter, furrier (skinner), smoke-cnrer, fustian-weaver, 
engraver, gardener, inn-keeper, collier, illuminator, printer^ 
lithographer, engineer, lapidary, linen-draper, optician, machin- 
ist, mechanician, mason (brick-layer), paper-marbler, marble- 
cutter, mariner, navigator, joiner, miller, moulder, dealer, gold- 
smith, milliner, niinter, gold-searcher, perfumer, ferry man, 
lace- weaver, pastry-cook, hair- dresser, photographer, plasterer^ 
plumber, pump- maker, potter, pewterer, chimney-sweeper, 
patcher, lace-mender, ribbon-weaVer, sand-moulder, sawyer^ 
saddler, sculptor (statuary carver), painter, locksmith, cutler, 
ornamental plasterer, toyman, stone-cutter, tailor, tanner, up* 
holsterer,dyer, weaver, cooper, turner, dresser of white leather, 
urinator, varnish er^ glass-blower (founder), vine-dresser, glazier, 
fire-worker, book-keeper, thatcher, tiler, slater, feather-dresser, 
polisher of metals, moulder, packer, chair-bottomer, glue-boiler, 
hair-worker, siiverer, petardier, tagger, miner, ornament- 
worker, calenderer, lorimer, morocco-leather-dresser, file-cutter, 
tobacconist. 

Culinary art. Locomotive arts (coachmanship, wagoning, 
railroads). Agriculture. Architecture. Authography. Tele, 
graphy. Heraldic art. Trimming, Gas fitting. Shoeing- 
Chorography. Comedy. Metallurgy. Hydroraetry, Sciography* 
Stereotomy. Talidermy, Pyrotechmy. Glyptic. Flax, cotton- 
husbandry. Plastic art. Writing with its branches, tachy- 
graphy, calligraphy, chalcography, brach> graphy, chrysogra- 
phy, cryptography, stereography, stenography, steganography, 
pasigraphy. Wire works. Glass works. Art of producing 
crystals, iron, cast-iron, steel. Manufacturers in ivory. Indigo, 
tinder, sugar, umbrellas, silk, gypsum, oil-cloth, india-rubber, 
sieves, musical instruments, organs, spoons, corks, scythes, 
steel and gold pens, pipes, snuff-boxes, mineral water, manufac- 
turing, etc., etc. 

220. The great mass of objects connected with these arts 
enter into a well-equipped household, in order to the comfort 
of life. The production of them supposes, combines in science, 
in talents, in utensils, and practice, a variety of means over- 
whelming for individuals, and which society alone can furnish. 
One man occupies himself whth one single class during his 
whole life, constantly repeating it. He turns over to society 
the surplus above his own ccmsumption, to receive from it in 
exchange all other varieties. Suppose there are three thousand 
varieties of commodities produced by society, and one variety 
by one man. By exchange, this man is enabled to possess arti= 



58 



cles of the three thousand yarietles. It is as if he himself had 
created that prodigious quautity of commodities, the source of 
as many pleasures. 

221. When e:xchanges are not direct, they are effected hy 
money, which, hy agreement among nations, representing every 
vahie, renders them possible from one extremity of the globe 
to the other. Such are industry and commerce, which deter- 
mine high civilization, without which a nation sinks into mis- 
ery and the vices of the barbarous state ; but which fionrish 
only in the bosom of peace and profound security, and general 
probity, languishing and dying after a political and anarchical 
storm like those rich and delicate plants w^hich the ploughman 
finds in the morning withered and blackened, because by night 
some destructive breeze has passed over them. 

222. The choice of a calling. To master a calling there is 
necessary : (1.) a natural disposition, which gives the first in- 
clination to a business and delight in it ; (2.) a manual, in 
order to acquire its language and principles which are most 
fundamental ; (3.) a good master, in order to be well-instructed ; 
(4.) travels by which one comes in contact with every variety 
of works and methods, and which teach every body how to 
live ; (o.) a good, elementary edncation, in order to have the 
judgment most open to labor and guidance, and the body better 
prepared for action. Thus favored, if he labors with taste, ap- 
plication and dehberation, and not mechanically, accustoms 
himself to avoid mistakes, the Avorkman will attain ease and 
dispatch, will become capable, adroit, skillful, industrious, in- 
genious, inventive, handy, will not be awkward, inapt, and un- 
skillful ; he will not become a man of routine and custom, w^ho 
boggles, overdoes and bungles, but an expert who will produce 
master-pieces. 

2. MEANS OF OBTAmiSTG THE NEOESSAPwIES OF 

LIFE. 

223. Occupation. Succession. Alluvium. Prescription. 
Fructification. Contract. 

224. By occnpati(m one becomes proprietor of things which 
have no owner. The first man," says Pousseau. " who having 
inclosed a piece of ground, thought to say, This is mine," was 
the true founder of society." We read in Pascal, ' This dog is 
mine,' said those poor children — * this is my place in the sun " 
such was the commencement and the true picture of tiie occu- 
pancy of the whole earth. To-day as every thing is possessed, 
this means of acquiring property becomes almost insignificant, 
at least, in the Old World. 



59 



225. Snccession causes the property of the relatives to pass 
to relatives. For the multitudes ot* families who have little 
property or nothing, this means again is of no account. 

226. Alluvium and prescription suppose a x>ossession already, 
and occur in cases so rare, that they are slender means of ac- 
quiring anything. 

227. Fructification and multiplication. Ji. tobacco plant 
(nicotiana tabacum) produces 40,320 grains ; that is fructifica- 
tion. It applies to vegetables and animals alone. Fructifica- 
tion also supposes anterior possession, and hence is not a uni- 
versal means of acquiring things destined to satisfy the wants 
of existence ; for, how many persons under the vault of heaven 
are in complete destitution ! i3ut is there any universal means 
of acquiring property? Yes, it is by— 

228. Contract, that is the grant on the part of the proprietor 
to liim who has not. Few men are in possession of a super- 
fluity ; those who have it, retain it; and, moreover, should they 
give it away, tliis superabundance would be very far from satis- 
fying all wants. A man grants his property to another on the 
condition of receiving its equivalent either in services rendered, 
or in objects of some other kind. How shall he who has 
nothing give an equivalent for that he receives ? Let him ac- 
quire a calling. However little confidence he may inspire, he 
will obtain from others — payment being deferred — the raw 
material. On this raw material he will bestow forms, which, 
by rendering it convenient for human use, will triple, quadru- 
ple, centuple its worth. 

229. Labor is the only savior of nineteen-twentieths of man- 
kind. They ought to depend upon no other. Wealth is obtain- 
ed by labor only upon certain conditions. First, it is necessary 
to be a good workman, for a botcher is naturally not sought 
after, lacks custom, lies out of employment, is compelled to 
carry about his works, the lack of skill in which repels pur- 
chasers, lives poorly, is no better than a starveling. One must 
become established, devote one's self to a single profession, as 
generally a man cannot exercise many. When a calling suits, 
it should not be changed, one must follow it steadily ; for the 
artisan who changes, while he is flying about, and fluttering 
from one thing to another, loses a great deal of time, without 
reference to the fact that he is most frequently deceived in the 
hopes which a dififerent position held out to him. 

230. Labor should be sustained, patient, assiduous, continued, 
regular, persevering, proportioned to our strength, which we 
repair by rest and recreation when it is exhausted. We should 
be active, enterprising, addicted to early rising, careful, labo- 



60 



rions, stirring, shonld pursue a work without remission, and 
not fear frequent lucubration. We shonld not be careless, 
dronish, fitful, procrastinators, shonld not slubber, begin and 
never finish. 

231. We have to avoid in the acquisition and use of wealth, 
the being covetous, greedy, insatiable, presumptuous, skinflints, 
misers, scrapers, gripers, stingy, whiners. We should procure 
the useful in preference to the agreeable, and the necessary in 
preference to the useful. We should know how to be content- 
ed with what Providence lias allotted us, and not be eager for 
wljat we cannot obtain by legitimate means. If we have only 
what is needful, let us be content with it. If we have the 
needful and the useful, let us not torment ourselves by coveting 
the agreeable which we see in the hands of others. AYhat have 
we to gain by acting otherwise? We should be contented. Is 
not this maxim true even for him who is compelled to ask for 
alms? To be grieved, harrassed, and afflicted, is to add other 
evils to one already sufiiciently great in itself, which resigna- 
tion alone can to some extent mitigate. Shall the terrible laws 
of necessity that effect us any the less have their course? 
However, for a man of feeling, resignation in mendicity is hardly 
possible except under the influence of religion. 

232. The case of certain persons who are always excessively 
anxious about the future, even in the most prosperous circum- 
stances, is bad. To habituate one's self to be a worker, to limit 
one's appetite and gratify them with little; to consider the 
changes in life, the vicissitudes of fortune, which often hurl 
into penury and want the most wealthy, and heap riches on 
the poorest; the examples of great characters who have borne 
with magnanimity a condition akin to indigence, even refusing 
to leave it, snch as Socrates, Diogenes, Epaminondas, Curius, 
etc., are so many means of confirming within us contentment, 
tranquility, calmness in mediocrity. 

233. We ought to hold to our possessions ditinterestedly, in 
a generous spirit, anticipating that we may be dispossessed, so 
to speak, at any instant by events, and by death. We ought to 
act toward our body like generous hosts, supply it amply with 
all its needs, if we possess much, and limiting its portion ac- 
cording to the measure of om* faculties. 

234. Mendicity is the door open to the ill and closed to the 
good of the soul and body. They alone are excusable in con- 
tinuing in this deplorable state, who are incapable of escaping 
it by an absolute incapacity to labor. In general, men assailed 
by indigence exert themselves energetically to repel it by labor. 
But there are individuals of such a nature, that they preler to 



61 



roam and wander abont, to submit to the humiliation which 
there is always in extending one's hand to receive charity, 
rather to labor for a subsistence, trampling under foot all the 
laws of their being, forgetting that they render themselves the 
scorn and contempt of society, to whicli the}' are a burden and 
a leprosy, forgetting that almost all men are condemned to labor 
(in the sweat of thy brow shalt thoa eat bread), that he wlio 
is occupied has more enjoyment than the rich man who is un- 
occupied and has nothing to do. 

The toils that serve a truly hiiraan use, 

To man's true weal, and not to ill conduce** 

235. Besides the means of gaining livelihood which we havo 
just indicated, that is, the industrial arts and commerce, there 
are also the production of the scientific arts, the employments 
of government, of the clergy, instruction, etc. 

3. QUALITIES OF OBJECTS THAT SUEROUXD US. 

236. It pertains to the arts by which they are produced to 
speak of the good and evil in those objects. Some general 
qualities alone are in place here. The chief objects that supply 
our wants are : houses, furniture, vessels, wood, wheat, bread, 
wine, fruit, water, meat, linen, dress. 

237. A house is regular, substantial, neat, spacious, dry, 
plastered, whitewashed, healthy, convenient, new, airy, w^ell- 
lighted, salubrious. — A house is sorry, dark, old, full of cracks, 
dingy, slatternly, fallen to decay, ill-lighted, paltry, dirty, 
humid, unhealthy, insalubrious, inconvenient, low, narrow, 
murderous, smoky. Den. Cabin. Dungeon. Cottage. Hut. 
Box. Shed. Hole. Cot. Kennel. Stall. Hovel. Barrack. 
Nothing is more filthy than a room full of spiders' webs, of 
dust, not swept under the beds, book-cases, and chests, where 
old bits of boards lie about, the ofiTal of cats, dogs and chickens, 
straw, mouldy and muddy shoes, and the floor of which, never 
washed, is covered with an earthy matter, perhaps half an inch 
thick. 

238. Utensils washed, scoured and without rust. Furniture 
rubbed, brushed, wiped, cleaned, waxed — worm-eaten, decaying. 
Dirty linen is wrongly placed under the mattress, bolster, the 
pillow of a bed. The linen that comes in contact with the 
body requires cleanliness, not only for beauty, but also for 
salubrity. A delicate man is sick in a simple unswept room ; 

* Le travail aux hommes necessaire, 
Fait leur felicite plutotque leur misere. — Boileau. 



62 



he feels refreshed and revived when neatness has taken the 
place of filth. We are not less annoyed by the sight of dis- 
order in a house. It is well that its details should be classed 
and arranged ; and every object removed from its place for any 
purpose, should be immediately put back. A woman who 
loves order does not suffer things to lie about in her house, 
and keeps the linen and clothing free from rents. Let children 
be accustomed not to soil their garments when answering the 
calls of nature. We see many grown-up persons with their 
pantaloons soiled; that is still more inexcusable. 

239. It is important (particularly for health) that food should 
be clean, which depends in a great measure upon the cleanliness 
of the dishes. It is a great advantage for a woman to know how 
to make bread and to cook. Edibles ill-prepared have neither 
taste, nor savor, nor nutritive virtue, and are indigestible. A 
bad housekeeper with abundance of edibles, will never get a 
good meal for her family. Another with much less, will 
st.'adily provide for her household savory and delicious dishes. 

^40. Water is clean, pure, fresh, limpid, transparent, crystal. 
Water is turbid, warm, soft, of a swamp, stagnant, dead, miry. 
Snow-w-ater causes goitre. 

241. Wheat is filled with smut and other bad grains, with 
dust, earth, stones, worms, and weevils; is wet, heated, sprout- 
ed, decayed, burnt, black, light — is pure, dry, well-cleaned, 
round, shining, glittering, full, plump, heavy, mealy. Flour is 
heated, full of worms, spoiled, too old, too fresh, coarse, — 
white, fine. 

242. Bread is too hard, not enough raised, heavy, doughy, 
sour, dry, brown, tasteless, black, mouldy, decayed, burned, 
rasped, clammy. Bread is well-made, well-baked, raised, ten- 
der, spongy, savory, white. Stale bread. 

243. Wine is acrid, harsh, sour, too old, adulterated, tasting 
of the casks, having the taste of veijuice, of mouldiness, nido- 
rous. Heady wine. — Wine is genuine, pure, thin, old, sharp, 
strong, cordial, foamy, ros /, muscat. 

244. Fruits are green, too ripe, spoiled, bruised, mouldy, de- 
cayed, mealy, worm-eaten, withered, — ripe, natural, sugary, 
juicy, winy, full-grown, mellow. 

245. A man of taste insists that what is about him should 
partake of the perfection of art; that clothes and furniture 
should be well-made, shoes, hats, and the like. He insists that 
whatever is on his person and in his dwelling shall be riglit, 
that his garden be well laid out, harmoniously arranged and 
well-kept, his privies clean and convenient. The cause reveals 
itself in the effects. When you see everything well done, ar- 



63 



ranged, and ordered about any one, and on his person, say that 
■within there are many perfections. If, on the contrary, every- 
thing is in a state of neghgence and abandonment, you may 
judge that tliere are in his soul few good qualities and many 
bad ones. How many private persons in tlie country who are 
very rich, have no more decorum than persons in the lowcat 
ranks of society ! 

246. Finally, he is unbecoming in his dress who wears his 
garments disarranged in front, who wears them awkwardly, 
who is fashionable, ragged, looks like a fright, who is disguised, 
modish, perfumed, sparkish, dashing. A dress is motley, party- 
colored, dirt-catching, swelling, rumpled, dirty, disordered, 
greased, scanty, short, wet, dusty, patched^ soiled, tight-fitting, 
transparent, gaudy. To bedizen, to glass, to trick out. Baw- 
bles, finery, trinkets. Attire which is afiected, of studied ele- 
gance. Indecent toilet. Accoutrement without a name. 
Shabb}^ clothes. Seedy habiliments. Carnival mask. — 
A dress new, rich, simple, decent, modest, clean, spruce, 
sober. 

4. MEAN'S OF PPwESEBYIIs^G OBJECTS OF YALITE. 

247. We ought to preserve valuable property, and prevent 
its being destroyed. If any believes himself at liberty to spend 
wliat he has, reckoning upon his labor, he should be told, that 
the future is uncertain, doubtful, contingent, that work may 
fail hin], sickness may suspend his labor, that at length there 
is terrible old age awaiting him. Labor, also in a thousand 
circumstances brings with it many afflictions, is contrary to 
the repose so deur to our nature. Our duties toward our neigh- 
bor sliould maintain that of preventing the waste of property, 
even though we were certain that its value would come back 
tous some other way. (Suffering goods, edibles to be destroyed. 
I have seen a forest full of wood cut for twenty years.) It is 
useless to insist on immediate destruction without any rever- 
sionary purpose. 

248. We preserve property by removing the causes of des- 
truction and loss, such as the following: Natural waste, thieves, 
decay, humidity, filth, bad sales and speculations, gaming, acci- 
dents, disappearance, use, prodigality. 

249. 1. Time destroys everything. If we cannot arrest tliQ 
action of time we can at least delay it in many cases ; thus by 
restoring a bridge, an obelisk, a church, we prolong its ex- 
istence a century ; thus meat being salted and cured, and eggs 
rubbed with olive oil, will not spoil. 



64 



250. 2. The injustice and perversity of men demand that ob- 
jects that belong to ns be nruily shut up. 

251. 3. The beams, floors, furniture of a house decay if rain 
falls upon them. Hay, straw, vrheat mould, if they are stored 
^yhen ill dry or wet. Dirty linen reeking with perspiration 
mildews if put into the loft without being dried, or if heaped up 
there. Fruit which is too ripe, or wet, decays. Humidity, 
heat, flies hasten the corruption of meat. 

252. 4. An nninhabited house collects dampness and goes to 
decay. Whatever is in a damp place is damaged. Moths en- 
gender in clothes, particularly in woollen ones, and furs which 
are kept too long shut np in close furniture. They should be 
exposed to the sun and air. Mustiness. 

253. 5. Filth destroys furniture, vessels, edibles* (Danger 
to be poisoned by the copper vessels.) 

254. 6. To pay for a thing more than it is worth, to sell it 
for less than it is worth, or than it has cost, etc. Ignorance 
and inexperience are the cause of this disorder. 

255. 7. xVlas for gamesters ! Are there not persons who 
lose in a brief time enormous sums, entire fortunes! We 
should be on our guard against the passion for play which 
speedily insinuates into the soul, and there throws out deep 
roots. 

25t). 8. The principal accidents by which the existence of our 
property is endangered are : Conflagrations, inundations, war, 
hail, maladies, the fall of edifices, shipwrecks, drought, cold, 
and frost. 

257. Embers nnder beds and on floors ; lightning ; beams 
and thick soot in chimney nnsubstantial and ill laid ; reading 
with a candle in bed ; rags in the hole of a stove pipe ; straw 
and hay around a chimney; smoking in hay-loft and in 
stables; a puflT of wind into the fireplace; heated stones or 
tiles placed in a bed ; children left alone near a fire ; carrying 
fire carelessly, as a candle, lamp, or pan of coals too near 
a bed ; sticks or chips left near the hearth ; light in stables or 
barns, in collieries; fermentation of the rowen not dry ; public 
oven not arched ; friction in manufactories ; fires kindled and 
fire arms discharged near dwellings ; jihosphoric matches in the 
hands of little children ; the use of gas and mineral oils ; these 
are the principal circumstances that occasion conflagrations. 
• 258. Physical teaches us how to guard against the eflects of 
lightning. In 1837, sixty fires were occasioned in England by 
reading in bed, with candles. A heated tile ceases to be dan- 
gerous if sprinkled with water. Frightful accidents give ns to 
understand how fearful it is to leave children in a room where 



65 



there is fire. Tremble when you see a light carried hy a 
drunken man into barns and stables ! The police in France 
have been very prudent in ordering communal ovens to be arched, 
in forbidding the discharge of fire-arms in towns and villages, 
and abolishing the use of thatched roofs. A universal means of 
protecting ourselves against losses by fire is furnished us in in- 
surances. 

259. We can save but little from the action of inundation, 
war, earthquakes, hail, etc. When we build, or repair a house, 
we should have particular regard to the solidity of the edifice. 
As to diseases, which exhaust the purse while ruining health, 
and to the maladies of cattle, we must refer to hygiene, and 
the veterinary art. 

260. 9. We do not lose by mislaying what we have upon our 
persons or elsewhere Avhen we are careful and considerate. 

261. 10. Usage wears away furniture, linen, clotljes, imple- 
ments, etc. We can delay their destruction only by a prudent 
way of using them. Thus one will not crack or break imple- 
ments that are brittle, will not bruise others, and by patching, 
mending, piecing, and restoring immediately clothes, and linen, 
we prevent the rents and holes from growing larger. 

262. Either the income from what we possess is sufficient for 
our wants, or it is not. In the latter case it is plain that if we 
wish to preserve the principal of our property, labor must sup- 
ply the deficiency. If labor is impossible for us we must in- 
croach upon it; we can only consume it less speedily. On this 
supposition we have a great principle : Never to consume more 
than one's income; we must shear the sheep, according to the 
popular proverb, without cutting its flesh. If our income only 
suffices for what is necessary, let us limit expenses to what is 
necessary. If it suffices for what is needful and useful, let us 
spend for the needful and useful ; and if it allows us to add the 
agreeable, let us spend for the necessary, the useful and the 
pleasurable. To act in accordance with these principles, is to be 
economical. W^e are also economical if we are sparing on the 
three classes of expenses in order to add to and increase our 
capital. To do that, the head of a family should keep a strict 
account of the items of his property, his capital, of his income, 
and of his expenses. He who manages his afl:airs in darkness 
is soon plunged in an abyss of which he is not aware till he has 
reached the bottom ; then he is surprised, alarmed, and despe- 
rate ; like the pilot who, in a stormy night, imagines that he 
sails along well-known shores, but recognizes at day-break that 
he has passed hills and piles of ice that have closed in upon 
him, and he has entered a sea whence there is no escape. 



66 



2G3. Luxury, pride and extravai?ance whether in dress, in 
furniture, equipage, etc., are opposed to economy. Profusion 
and debauchery, which are bad even in liim who is rich, are 
serious draughts on the capital of him who has only sufficient 
income for Ids legitimate wants. To limit one's bodily appetites, 
and restrain the passions, are the remedy for these disorders. 
Pride and vanity are the cause of extravagance in clotiiing and 
furniture, etc. The knife must be laid to the most delicate 
roots of pride and vanity. In the use of luxurious food, these 
passions have gluttony for a satellite, which is the herald of de- 
bauchery. Grhittony and gormondizing must be assailed 

264. The demand for food and drink is satisfied with a little. 
The glutton is insatiable: he eats by day, he eats by night. 
After drinking all day, we see drunkards laying in a supply of 
two or three bottles of wine for the night. A gluttonous hun- 
ger and thirst are evidently factitious wants, which have a 
frightful strength in ripe age. Have we not natural wants 
enough to ' compel us to labor? How will it be if artificial 
wants render them twice or threefold stronger? 

205. We often neglect to keep account of items for want of 
understanding to how much they will amount after a certain 
time. Peter smokes to tlie amount of a cent, ana takes snufi'to. 
the same amount every day. At tlie end of a year he will 
without doubt, have expended the sum of $7 30 ; that is, he 
spends in superfluities the worth of 243 pounds of bread, the 
bread being reckoned at three cents a pound. How many 
workmen who can earn $1 30 a day, make a holyday of one 
workday a Aveek, and then spend $1 30 more than on ordinary 
days. Do they imagine that this idle day costs them a loss of 
$139 20 at the end of fifty-two weeks? If they thought so, it 
would be impossible for them to continue such a course. 

266, AYhat a prodigious quantity of edibles would remain in 
a country at the year's end, and how much less misery should 
we every where see, if there were fewer boon-companions, and 
gulf- alls, whose otdy thought is merry-making, cutting a dash, 
carousing, junketing, spreeing, taking their ease, dissipating, 
and squandering money — if everyone, truly abstinent, con- 
sumed only what is necessary for subsistence and legitimate 
comfort ! 

267. Let us hear how the Scytian Anacharsis, according to 
Cicero, knew how to limit his wants: I have," said he, ''for 
a coat, the skin of a beast ; for shoes, the tougkness of my 
feet; for a bed, the earth; for seasoning to my food, hunger. 
I live upon milk, cheese, and flesh. I am happy." Hanno, to 
whom these words were addressed, had sent him a great sum 



6T 



of money. An aeli arsis added : As for these presents, give 
tliem to your fellow-citizens or to your deity." The great 
Diogenes had so astonishinuly restricted his appetites and 
wants, that lie succeeded in satisfying their demands with bread, 
water, a cloak, and a tub. Alexander tlie Great, journeying to 
Corinth, desired to see him, and found him at the moment 
when he was warming himself in the sun. ''Do you not Avisli 
anything of me?" said the prince. That y(m should stand a 
little out of my sun-light," answered the philosopher. The 
conqueror of Asia was so charmed with this reply, that he de- 
clared to his attendants, if he were not Alexander, he would 
wish to be Diogenes. 

268. 10. Prodigality is a fondness for giving to others with- 
out discernment. It springs from an inconsiderate disinter- 
estedness, from an absence of reflection, from hnbecility and 
stupidity, sometimes from pride and debauciiery. It raises up 
scarcely less spendthrifts and wasters than the foregoing. 



DUTIES TOWARDS OTHER MEN. 

2C9. We have said that we understood by moral good and 
evil, the good and evil of intelligent beings, of that wliich has 
life. In proving, in a vague and general way, that we ought 
not to create moral evil, ought not to hinder its destruction, 
ought not to destroy moral good, ought not to hinder the crea- 
tion of it, we have already demonstrated that a man ought not 
to create evil to his neighbor, ought not to hinder its destruc- 
tion, ought not to destroy the good of another man, ought not 
to hinder its creation. We will confirm the truth of these 
negative duties by adding : 

270. 1. We ought not to do to another what we would not 
that he should do to us. But we would not that another should 
create evil for us, should prevent its destruction, should destroy 
our good, should hinder its creation. Then we ought not to 
create evil for our neighbor, ought not to hinder its destruction, 
ought not to destroy his good, ought not to hinder its creation. 

271. 2. If you affirm that you may slay me, burn my house, 
I will answ^er, that I too can slay you, and burn your house. 
You pronounce my ruin, I pronounce yours. You perceive 
that your duties towards yourself, wTiich you do not disclaim, 
beget for you the latter as respects me. We have hence estab- 
lished that we ought to create the good of our neighbor, hin- 
der its destruction, destroy his evil, prevent its creation. We 
will add : 



68 



272. 1. We ought to do to our neighbor what we would 
that he should do to us, iSTow, we would that he should create 
our good, should prevent its destruction, should destroy our 
evil, should prevent its creation. Tlien we ought to create the 
good of our neighbor, prevent its destruction, destroy his evil, 
pi-event its creation. 

273. 2. If you believe you can do nothing for me, I shall 
believe I can do nothing for you. The duty of not preventing 
the services which may come to us from others, begets our 
positive duties as respects them. 

274. It will be' seen that social morality is a repetition of 
individual morality, except that we are substituted for our 
neighbor as subjects of duty. Now the idea of duty cannot be 
chanued by that substitution. What a person ought to do or 
not to do to himself, I ought to do or not to do the same, being 
his representative. 

275. Our positive duties towards our neighbor are subject to 
conditions. 1. In order that we may be obliged to act for the 
neighbor, he must be unable to do the same thing himself. 
There being one cause for an effect, it is useless to assign many 
for it. 2. We cease to be obliged to act for others, if we liave 
need of our activity for ourselves. Our duties towards them 
are then jitaralysed, overborne by ours towards ourselves. First 
for myself. Well-ordered charity begins witli ourselves. 3. If 
the operations necessary to create the good of our neighbor, 
etc., involve trouble, fatigue, loss of rest, diminution of the 
plenitude and integrity of oar being, we ought not to act for the 
reason that we should violate negative duties towards ourselves. 

276. These different cases are explained and moditied by the 
propositions, Between two evils (one in our neighbor, the other 
in ourselves) we must choose the least" — ''Between two things 
good (the same), we should take the greater," which are true 
with the exception that the equalization and equilibrium is 
measured by a sufficiently great superiority in the good and 
evil of others over our own (28, 29). 

277. The duties of a man towards a man give to the latter 
corresponding rights. A man possesses in the active duties of 
another towards him a property which it is important to hus- 
band and not dissipate. 

278. We are not simply not bound to act for others when 
they have no need of us ; we ought also not to intermeddle in 
their affairs, nor interfere, nor thrust ourselves into them ; 
hence the odiousness of the terms factotum, busy-body, otH- 
cious, meddler. 

Our neighbor's good and evil reside partly in us, partly in him. « 



69 



THE "GOOD A^fD EVIL OP OTTR NElGItBOR THAT LIE IN TTS, 

THE SOUL. 

SE]S^8IBILITY. 

279. Good sentiments. Love. Affection is an heartfelt love. 
An affectionate man. 

Friendsliip. This sentiment, which estahlishes a sort of fn- 
Bion between two souls, rests npon respect, esteem, and confi- 
dence. Intimate friends. 

Tenderness. We are tenderly affected toAvards any one at 
the sight, or the account of a .calamity of which he is the 
victim. 

280. Benevolence. A sentiment that inclines us to wish 
another's good, and to do everything in our power to pro- 
cure it. 

Commiseration. A blending of tenderness and sorrow in 
view of the ills of others. 

Compassion — Is a participation in the grief of our neighbor. 

281. Emotion. "We are moved in regard to others in the 
happiness, the misfortune, in the great events of life. Joseph, 
King Pharaoh's minister, was moved wben he saw his brothers 
again. What heart is not moved in reading their famous re- 
cognition ! 

282. Gratitude and thankfulness. Determined by a benefit, 
they suddenly excite in us a great benevolence for its author. 

Interest. A sort of fondness for any one, whose person or 
affixirs foretoken great expectations of talent and fortune. 
Fraternity. Love like that which exists between brothers. 

283. Patriotism. Love of country. 
Philanthropy. Love of mankind. 

Pity. A sort of tender concern for the miseries of others. 

284. Eespect. An emotion that m presence of other men 
produces an inward and outward decency of deportment be- 
coming t(^ward one of a serious, grave and thoughtful charac- 
ter. Eespectful. Keverend. 

285. Solicitude. Benevolence attended with fear of evil to 
the person who is the object of it. 

Sympathy. Attractive sensibility which those inspire who 
resemble us in taste, manners, qualities, etc. 

Veneration. The great respect to w4iich persons of great 
virtue, of great merit and eminent power, are e-ntitled. 

286. Bad sentiments. Bitterness, harshness, acrimony, 
acerbity, sourness, spleen, hypochondria, moroseness, ill-temper. 



70 

cliagriii. When directed towards any one, tliese sentiments be- 
come nnsoclal. 

Antipathy or dislike. The opposite of sympathy. 

Apanthropy. Misanthropy through disease. 

Animosity. Hatred which inclines us to injure by ven- 
geance. 

287. Aversion. A feeling which inclines us to keep aloof 
from any one. 

Anger. Wrath. Kage. 

Curiosity— Is unsocial when it desires to penetrate incon- 
siderately into the ajiairs of others. 

Envy. Chagrin, displeasure caused by the success, advan- 
tage, happiness of others. 

288. Gall. A sort of bitterness towards any one. 

Hatred. A vehement impulse which inclines us to drive from 
our presence and our thought, the person against whom it is 
directed, to wish and cause his evil. A concealed hatred is 
called venom. Hateful, wounded hearts. 

289. Enmity. The antipodes of friendship. Implacable 
enemies. 

Jealousy, Mortification to see what one would wish for 
one's self, possessed hy another. 

Misanthropy. Aversion for society. 

Rancor. Anger retained and permanent which demands 
vengeance. 

290. i^esentment. An intense and prolonged consciousness 
of one offense received, Avith a desire of vengeance. 

Rivalry. Sorrow, grief to see an advantage gained by an 
antagonist, which had been opened to competition. It is cured 
by emulation. 

Vengeance, in the sense of an emotion, is an active hatred 
with delight in the harm it does to its object. 

291. Pride and vanity. The basis of pride is an elation and 
swelling of the heart which reacts upon the imagination. Un- 
der the influence of this elation, the me reflecting sees itself and 
its qualities greater than they are, sees itself as better than 
others who grow small before it. The soul judges it, 
and affirms it within itself spontaneously. The soul believes 
it, manifests it, takes delight in its false ideas. The proud man, 
full of himself, putfed up, infatuated with his desert, becomes 
inflated, swollen, 'carries his head high, struts, takes excep- 
tion, brags, flaunts, is offended, holds up his head, plays 
the ihijjortant, the wit, is imperious, dogmatic, irritable, 
magisterial, lofty, unapproachable. He is the father of the 
afltected, the pretentious, the bravado, of the pedagogical, the 



71 



presnmptnons, the swncrger, the self-sufficient, the arrognnt, the 
dandy, tlie braggart, the impertinent, tlie insolent, tlie saner, 
the impudent, the audacious, the presuming, the brazen-faced, 
the irreverent. From pride proceed self-h)ve, insults, liaUghtj 
airs, conceit. 

292. Vanity, which stmts about and admires itself, takes on 
airs, makes a show, is the principle of display, boasting, vain 
glory, empty complaisance, ostentation, tavvdriness, degrades 
to the level of -children fops, coxcombs, rascallious, dapper 
fellows, sparks, narcissuses. 

293. To these qualities are to he opposed renunciation, abne- 
gation, forgetfulness of self, sound logic, simplicity, plainness, 
modesty, humility, reserve, candor, respect for mankind. We 
assail them in their causes, w^hich are ordinarily wealth, know- 
ledge, talents, superiority, authority — although sometimes pride 
is found lodged in individuals the most destitute of merit and 
wealth. In a mind that reasons, that thinks, wealth and power 
inspire a love for men, whom they enable us to assist, and not 
outrageous sentiments like the latter. Could a man be proud 
of his endowments, if he considered how much he still lacks, 
and how many miseries and imperfections are the lot of our 
nature ; proud of his science and talents, if he w^ere to ask 
Iiimself what the pale lights of his mind are beside universal 
science, the knowledge of nearly 400 arts and sciences, and 
what are his few talents in the exercise of so many arts. Pride 
is the badge of stolidity, and the counterfeit of magnanimity. 

294. Comparatively speaking, the delight of our souls at the 
ills and misfortunes of our neighbor, is for him an evil, just as 
our grief at his ills, and his misfortunes is for him a good. 
Our joy over his joy and over his happiness, our sorrow over 
his joy and over his happiness, are for him a good and evil. 

295. Our social and unsocial ali'ection are good and evil at 
the same time for our neighbor and for ourselves. We may say 
almost as much of other facts in regard to our neighbor, which 
do not spring from our personality. 

296. ACTIVITY IlSr KEFERE^^CE TO THE SOCIAL AF- 
FECTION— See 134. 

UNDEESTANDING. 

Good and Evil. 

297. It is a good for our neighbor that we should know his 
person, his qualities, his talents, his fortunes, and h.is virtues. 
The first thing two strangers do who meet, is to make mutual 



72 



inquiries as to who and what they are. This knowledge is 
necessary to ns in order to perform our duties toward him. 

298. It would be bad to know the defects, miseries and crim- 
inality of a man, unless (1) we could destroy or remove them, or 
aid him to do it; (2) or unless the knowledge of them should 
be demanded by our own interests or those of third persons ; 
(3) or unless we are in danger of doing him an evil, supposing 
that we do him good, or are likely to fail in the conduct we 
should show him. Because this pupil is likely to give the itch 
to all his fellow-scholars, it is doing him no wrong to declare 
to the whole class that he has the itch. It is no evil to this 
drunkard that you know him, when the money he asks of you 
should be spent in twenty-four hours. 

299. Motives. — The knowledge that we might have, might 
produce in him such mortification as to render us odious to 
him. It might even go so far as to put an end between him and 
us, to the relation upon which his means of subsistence depend. 
Example : A servant has stolen from his master. A year's im- 
prisonment has so effectually corrected hi'm, that a similar mis- 
deed has henceforth been rendered impossible for him. It is 
manifest tliat this man is entitled to the confidence of a new 
master. Bat the latter, nevertheless, if he gets wind of what 
he has done, will most assuredly not keep him. 

300. All evils, even crimes, do not produce these results. 
On the contrary, there are evils that produce a reflex of esteem : 
such are wounds and mutilation received in a just war, natural 
maladies, the miseries that spring from misfortunes and acci- 
dents. Any petty details of life, although good things, it is ill 
should be known : you make it a point that no one shall know 
what is in your purse, in your cellar, etc. 

AOTIYITY EELATIVE TO THE Ui^^DEESTANDIXG. 

Good, and Bad, 

301. Observation^. It is well to observe in our neighbor 
what we ought to know about him : it is bad to note about 
him that of which we ought to be ignorant. Application. 
When acquaintance and friendly relations are established be- 
tween you and another person, you should show attention to 
such a person upon meeting him, particularly if such meetings 
are rare. If you fail in this respect, he complains and says : 

He did not notice me ; he is uncivil." In conversation, one 
means of rendering ourselves agreeable is to inquire into what 
is good or ill for our neighbor (in the sense indicated above), to 
attend to it, to listen to what is said of it by others, or the per- 
son himself. j 



13 



302. We ordinarily do a pleasure to any one by asking to see 
the beauties of his apartments, his estates, or his curiosities, 
etc. It is bad to look any one in the face, him who is rising 
from bed or retiring to it, or who is answering the calls of na- 
ture. It is wrong in the houses of others, to open chests, 
desks, drawers, to uncover vessels to see what is within them, 
to examine the rooms or rummage any objects within them, 
and to gape about at what is going on there. It is wrong to 
stare at persons who are drinking, who are eating; to listen to 
one talking in a low voice ; to take one's stand before groups, 
particularly of persons with whom we are little acquainted, and 
to push our heads forward to hear their conversation ; to watch 
and listen at doors and windows ; to look at what one is writing 
or reading, to open a letter. Eavesdropper. 

303. It is well to give attention to a person speaking to us, 
interrogating or questioning us. An assembly to which an ora- 
tor is delivering a speech, an address, or a discourse, should 
listen. The obligation to listen ceases, if the discourse is 
vicious, if it favors immorality, etc., and becomes an obligation 
not to listen. (Deportment in meetings, ^©teatres, schools, aca- 
demies, courts of justice, public assemblies, legislative halls, at 
family gatherings, etc.) 

304. Our judgments and our beliefs in reference to our neigh- 
bor, are subject to the same rules, to the same principles, estab- 
lished by logic for all judgments and beliefs whatever. Preju- 
dice here takes the name of rash judgment. Since our judg- 
ments and our beliefs should incline to the truth, we must 
appreciate, approve, esteem, and regard in others, whatever 
they possess deserving appreciation, and esteem, and regard ; 
to suspect, doubt, disapprove, fear, condemn, blame, censure, 
what deserves suspicion, doubt, disapproval, fear, blame, con- 
demnation ; to trust and distrust them according as they are 
trustworthy or untrustworthy. Let us remember to suspend all 
judgments, all beliefs in regard to them when we know nothing 
of them. Let us remember not to be men of prejudice, nor 
distrustful, nor confident, nor suspicious, nor easily offended. 
(Applications.) 

305. The knowledge we have of the merits, qualities, etc., 
of our neighbor, our different judgments, beliefs, affirmations, 
and observations relating thereto, constitute his honor, his 
fame, or renown, his reputation, his credit, his celebrity, his 
glory. His defects, his demerits, etc., subject to the same 
conditions render him of ill repute, decried, discredited, 
dishonored, disrespected. The acts of despising, con- 
temning, disdaining, w^hich are a combination of judgments, 



beliefs, sentiments, etc., are evil as res^Dects our neighbor, — 
Contemptuous. 

806. Will. It is well to will, wish, desire, that the good of 
others should be realized, should not be destroyed ; that their 
ill should be destroyed, should not be realized ; that they 
should fulfill all their different kinds of duties. It is wrong to 
will, wish, desire, that their good should be destroyed, not re- 
alized ; that their ill should be realized, and not destroyed, and 
they should violate their obligations ; it is wrong to covet their 
propertv, — Selfish. Malevolent. Indifferent. Personal. Be- 
nevolent. 

307. The acts of the will called contracts, here demand im- 
portant observations. Contracts are a volition, are a volition 
manifested by speech to create or not, to destroy or not, moda- 
lities, or to revoke a right ; such is a promise. They are also 
the renunciation of a right ; such as a donation. Promises, 
concessions of right, are gratuitous or reciprocal. Promises, 
whether gratuitous or onerous, do not strictly engender new 
obligations ; they only render natural obligations already exist- 
ing more explicit, mm'e prominent, more imperative. I engage 
to do any thing for you. That something, I am already bound 
to do or not to do, since duty constantly guides or follows our 
activity. If obligations could not be in harmony, identical, it 
might happen that I should be at once obliged to act and to 
abstain from doing the same thing, which is a terrible contra- 
diction. Hence it follows that we cannot engage to violate our 
duties. 

308. As to contracts of the concession of rights, it is evident 
that they are null, when they involve the violation of the duty 
not to destroy our own good. Would you accept the bed of a 
neighbor whom his gift would compel to sleep on the damp 
ground ? 

309. The validity of reciprocal contracts, in which one pro- 
mises, concedes what one ought not to do, ought not to concede, 
rests upon, an equality, an equivalency of services to be ren- 
dered, of values of which the contracting parties have divested 
themselves each for the other ; for if one of them did not 
receive an equivalent for what he does, for what he gives, he 
would do himself an injury in the difference. But all that is 
very difficult to observe in practice ; so that it is true to say in 
general that one must keep one's word, and fulfill the obliga- 
tions one has assumed by contracts, bargains, treaties, parts, 
agreements, conventions, stipulations, engagements. Before 
making a contract we are bound to consider well its nature and 
consequences. 



75 



310. The obligations of contracts have more than purely 
natural obligations, a deception in their violation, a failure of 
connection between a volition and its object. If any loss of* 
good or any evil arises from this violation, the author of this is 
responsible for, it. When they are written^ formally stated in 
the presence of witnesses, one may appeal to the civil power to 
secure performance. (Legal works.) 

311. pEmciPAL VARIETIES OF conTkacts : ProUiise, donation, 
loan, testament, partnership, exchange, annual rents, pnr chase 
and sale, hiring and leasing, deposits, mohatra, bailment, pledge^ 
hypothecation, security, mortgage, insurance, fief, lottery, bail, 
gaming, wager, truce, armistice. 

312. To buy and sell are daily operations. In virtue of the 
principle of equality of value, the seller should have fixed and 
fair prices, should not overcharge in order not to sell too high. 
He ought, moreover, not to be particular and exactiftg. With 
such a seller the buyer should not haggle, nor underbid, should 
be open and accommodating. One is always annoyed to see a 
buyer who chafiers, examines too long, hesitates, pays up by 
driblets, penny upon penny, 

318. One is not less anUroyed to see good faith almost ban- 
ished from commerce, and falsehood and fraud sitting in its 
place. The cheating merchant does himself more wrong than 
his customer ; he does not see him again. Believe it — the 
gilded sign that will draw custom to your establishment, is 
truth, good faith, and moderate profits. 



THE BODY. 

GOOD AND EVIL* 

PASSIVITY. 

814. The respect which we owe to our neighbor demands 
that in our intercourse, interviews, and communications with 
him, particularly in his domicile, and if he be a worthy person, 
our body should be in a decent state, should be far from the 
bad conditions which depend upon ourselves, chiefly filth and 
indecency, that there should be neatness and decency in person 
and dress. 

ACTIVITY. 

815. Here applies all we have said on the attitude, move- 
ments, and positions of the body. But in physical activity, the 
following are the good and ill qualities of conduct that bear 
upon the neighbor. 



76 



316* Evil. Fits of passion, blimtness, kiclvs, wry faoes, mim- 
icry, mocking gestures, hastiness, jeers, impatience, repulses, 
rebuffs, trickery, freaks, coldness, angry sallies, derision, laugh- 
ter ; the acts indicated by the words to spit npon, to beat 
down, to defy, to stuff up, to taunt, to pout, to sulk, to storm, 
to throw back one^s head, to shrug the shoulders ; and in gene- 
ral all the movements by which the unsocial aifections betray, 
manifest^ discharge, and rent themselves, Shoot out the 
tongue at any one. To follow, pursue, to chase after any one. 

317* The acts of the body by which the social aflections 
manifest themselves are good towards others* Such are salu- 
tation, bows, reverences, receptions, attentions, cares, honors, 
caresses, good manners, good looks, familiarities, farewells. 
JS'ursing, feasting. Pitying (in misfortune). Familiarity, which 
jokes and jests, supposes a preceding acquaintance. But from 
a delicate 'and refined familiarity to an insipid and unseemly 
familiarity that engenders contempt, the descent is easy. It is 
for young people to anticipate old men, for those less deserving 
to anticipate the more deserving in these different demonstra- 
tions. — Obsequious. 

818. In the city, it would be becoming for no one to appear 
in the streets without being entirely dressed, and without hav- 
ing one^s head covered, unless one were employed there. It is 
bad to eat, to run in the street, to keep turning the head from 
side to side, to gaze at the buildings, to point at one with the 
finger. 

To hang about the doors of the wealthy. Loitering. Loun- 
ger. 

319. "We always give the inside of the walk to a more hon- 
orable person than ourselves, and in his company we avoid 
keeping our hands behind our backs, or in our pockets. If one 
walks with several persons at once, thejnost deserving occupy 
the middle. An inferior whom two persons of higher rank 
place between them, turns his face to each in succession at each 
end of tlie place of their walk. The superior does the same be- 
tween two equal inferiors, an equal between two equals. If the 
outside walkers are unequal in rank, he who is between them 
pays most respect to the more deserving. It is wrong to keep 
one's hand on the shoulder, or on the middle of the body when 
walking. 

320. When the group stops, they must take such a position 
that no one of them shall turn his back upon another ; and this 
precaution should be taken in all cases of meeting, when too 
great a crowd does not prevent it. We should avoid positions 
which may be a constraint to others, or hinder their vision of 



11 



any tiling they may desire to see. Finally, we must guard 
against movements by which our neighbor might be struck, 
elbowed, jostled, jammed, or thrust. (Dangers among great 
masses.) Our movements in his company should not be too full 
of delicacy and circumspection. It is right to pick up an object 
which any one lets fall near us, and to olFer him a hammer, 
shovel, axe, or penknife by turning the handle. 

821. Knock at the door of a house or room before going in ; 
do not open and shut it too violently. Make a salutation upon 
going in and coming out. In general we salute a person upon 
meeting him, and upon leaving him. A salutation should be 
returned. It is wrong to remain covered if the company is un- 
covered, to be seated when every one is standing. It is wrong 
to turn one's back to the fire-place, or take a position before 
the fire so as in any manner to intercept the sight of it, or the 
w^armth from it. It is wrong to scratch one's self, to cut one's 
nails, to yawn, above all, with out-stretched arms, to sleep, to 
doze, to beat one's clothes, to brush one's shoes, to clean one's 
self, to comb, dress, and undress in presence of company, or to 
bathe in public. It is wrong to take off the shoes to warm 
one's feet, or to dry one's stockings at the fire, or at a stove, 
unless the case be very urgent, and by permission of those 
present. It is wrong to pass before any one, or to stretch out 
one's arm before one to reach any thing to another, unless one 
cannot do otherwise (in such cases, pardon is asked) ; to go into 
the houses of strangers without having any thing to do there. 

322. It is right to rise when any one calls upon us, to accom- 
pany him continually during his visit, to follow him to the 
door, and to light the stair-case for him, the yard and the street, 
when it is night. To go up and down stairs by taking several 
steps at a time ; to take off", or raise one's hat at every question 
a person superior puts^ to take and give with the left hand ; to 
present the latter, or a finger to be shaken ; to look into one's 
handkerchief after spitting in it ; to draw too near any one, to 
breathe in his face, to sneeze noisily, or to belch before 
him ; to lean upon the back of a chair, or to lean back with 
one's shoulder, are things very unbecoming, especially when 
one makes visits or takes part in a repast. 

323. Eepast. The master of the house ought himself to as- 
sign the places of his guests, who are to be arranged at table 
according to their ranks, and their deserts, or according to cir- 
cumstances and customs. Every one keeps what is expressly 
given him by the master. If a dish is passed round, every one 
serves himself in his turn ; except that an inferior never allows 
himself to be served before a superior. lie who serves ought 



IS 



to be careful in serving the food, in passing a dish, or a plate, 
not to spatter or spill the gravy over them near him. He to 
whom a piece is offered, holds out his plate, bows, and thanks 
the donor. If the guests are a little crowded, it is wrong to 
spread out one's elbows, or to make one's self at ease by 
discommoding others. 

324. It is shameful to show eagerness to be served, to look at 
the dishes with longing eyes, to show delight at their appear- 
ance, to notice what is passed to one's neighbor, to smack one's 
lips, to eat mincingly. We take the piece set before us, what- 
ever it be. We do not let our eyes wander here and there 
while drinking, we keep our eyes on what we drink. If you 
dislike a dish, you let it alone without exhibiting your dislike. 
If you find an insect, a hair on your plate, you remove it in 
such a way that no one may perceive and share your disgust. 
A glass and bread are passed on a plate, and never with the 
hand. Too frequent toasts are annoying. It is disgusting to 
pick one's teeth at table, still more, one's ears. Do not speak 
with glass in hand. Beware of finding fault with any little de- 
fect in the cookery of what has been prepared for us ; but let us 
despise sycophants, parasites, spongers, hangers-on, catchbits, 
lick-dishes, lick-spittle, suckers. 

SPEECH. 

THE GOOD AND BAD. 

325. The educated man responds to him who speaks to him ; 
he does not give him occasion to repeat his words ; does not 
interrupt him ; does not speak low to his neighbor in company, 
where he neither raises his voice too high, nor speaks too low; does 
not aflirm what a superior has said, whom he sufiers to express 
his own mind, and never gives him the lie ; does not engross 
the conversation ; ridicules no one, and says nothing in an un- 
known language. 

326. From his mouth there issue no jeers, jests, vituperations, 
quizzings, personalities, epigrams, invectives, tearings, cavils, 
abuse, bufiboner}'^, quibbles, banterings, indecencies, sarcasms, 
malignant criticising, reports, idle stories, reproaches, nick- 
names, diatribes, sallies, taunts, foolish expressions, indecent 
allusions, stinging, biting, caustic comparisons, clamors, vocife- 
rous cries, pasquinades, contradictions, declamatory statements, 
he does not rail, revile, bluster, chide, satirise, find tault, 
thee-and-thou, address rudely, bepraise. He does not sing vul- 
gar songs ; does not whistle, does not shout to, hoot at one in the 
streets, nor sing there, nor in houses, unless requested to do so. 



79 



lie is neither a tnle-bearcr, a brawler, carper, quiz, grumbler, 
nor snarler. 

327. The honest man — whose tongue is neitlier cutting, un- 
bridled, nor malicious — is a stranger to calumnies, slanders, 
denunciations, imprecations, criminations, accusations, maledic- 
tions, detractions, depreciations, defamations, libels, anathemas, 
blasphemies, false reports, false testimony, adulations, captious 
and affected remarks ; does not decry, discredit, undervalue, 
lampoon, fabricate; is not encomiast, nor flatterer, nor an 
informer, nor hanger-on ; facts and qualities w^hich are odious, 
and most of which attach to the unworthy person of the false 
man. — Tongue of the asp. 

328. But it is well to employ toward our neighbor compli- 
ments, blessings, felicitations, congratulations, commendations, 
eulogies, apologies, panegyrics, justifications, intercessions, re- 
cantations, confessions. We have said that the inward disposi- 
tions are singularly expressed in the style of speech. It is of 
importance, then, that wdien w^e employ it in favor of our 
neighbor, it may be inspired with no unsocial sentiments, so as 
not to blend good and evil, that it may be stamped w^ith affec- 
tion and benevolence, in order to be of double value. — Secret, 
chatty, talkative. An Aristarchus. Sarcastic. Hypercritical. 
Taciturn. 

329. Words (and other facts) are in us evil toward our 
neighbor that tend to shock, w^ound, pester, offend, injure, in- 
sult, vilify, dishonor, baffie, or make sport of him, etc. 

3o0. Between men, the following things are evil : disputes, 
quarrels, differences, collisions, altercations, contradictions, con- 
flicts, tricks, outbreaks, squabbles, strifes, w^hich engender and 
keep alive schisms, dissensions, broils, separations, misunder- 
standing, disunion, division, disagreement, discord, confusion, 
and repel harmony, accord, union, confraternity, concord, peace 
in which we ought to pass this transitory and complicated ex- 
istence which God has allotted us on earth. 

331. Finally, the following are bad: a racket, uproar, hubbub, 
rows, bustle, din, clutter, wa*angling, tumult, fuss, which are 
brought about by disorders that precede. Clatter. Bacchana- 
lia, orgies, routs, hurly-burly. 

332. When one injures you, that is an evil which befalls you. 
Do you arrest this evil by returning it ? You abandon yourself 
to the same disorder as your neighbor, whom by that act you 
still more inflame. Make use of speech against your aggressor, 
but not in a vile manner like him. Speak to him rationally, 
calmly, firmly, but without bitteri;ess, even with mildness ; these 
means rarely fail. Do they not succeed ? Show indignation, 



80 



wrath ; use your physical force, if it he superior to liis. Can 
you accomplish nothing by these methods? Then endure 
silently, without emotion, despising them, the tumultuous elfu- 
sions of his anger, as you see the rock of an island immovable, 
unfeeling, and unharmed in presence of the foaming and roar- 
ing waves which break and vanish at its base. 

333. The details of our household demand a condition of 
neatness, order, and decency; our food a degree of excellence 
as is possible for us when we invite, request, and admit our 
neighbor to enjoy with us the sight and -the use of them. 
Hence an acquaintance would be exceedingly oiiended if we 
received him in a barn, gave him a bed in the stable, and 
offered him our coarsest and meanest food. 

EPITHETS THAT 03UGINATE IX THE DIFFERENT ATTITUDES, OPERA- 
TIONS, SITUATIONS OF OTIPw PERSONS TO OUR NEIGHBOR. 

834. Good. A man is accessible or approachable, accommo' 
dating, complying, atfable, easy, engaging, civil, eommunicativei 
confiding, cordial, courteous, compliant, discreet, meek and 
mild, gentle, reserved,, facetious, facile and affectionate, genteel, 
honest, open, peaceable, gallant, pleasant, polite, popular, 
sociable, ti-actable, sprightly. A pliant, yielding humor. A 
man of fine quality, of high standing, of good heart, of urban- 
ity, and amenity. A benevolent-looking gentleman. 

335. Bad, A man is testy, brutal, ceremonious, difficult, 
discourteous, harsh, peevish, precise, surly, impolite, unpopular, 
cantankerous, unsociable, unprepossessing, fractious, ungracious, 
dishonest, displeasing, intractable, stiff, crabbed, grim, dogged, 
pestering, violent, hostile, vexatious, objecting. A liend. A 
rough, 

336. The false man is he who manifests for others affection, 
esteem, good will, when these feelings do not exist, or others 
opposed to them hold their place within him. 

337. Here is an odious crew of which he is the stock : shuf- 
fler, skulking, cajoler, chameleon, coward, sly, charlatan, dis- 
sembler, courtier, dissimulator, double-faced, fair-spoken, spy, 
hypocrite, juggler, mealy-mouthed, honied, affected, proteus, 
malicious, cunning, prude, sanctimonious, shark, sly-boots, insi- 
nuating, siren, tartuffe, canter, seducer. 

338. Their stock in trade : affectation, mental reservations, 
Judas' kisses, pretences, collusions, connivances, subterfuges, 
feints, catches, machinations, artifices, manoeuvres, intrigues, 
fondlings, mummeries, prevarication, denials, recantations, 
snares, ambushes, concealments, trimmings, sentimentalities, 



81 



grimaces, simulation, devices, bribes, humbngs, plots, tergiver- 
sations, jobbings, evasions, shifts, Lush-money. 

339. Do not trust those persons who are cheats, triflers, 
artfn], cajolers, disloyal, inveiglers, falsifiers, traitors, knaves, 
defrauders, impostors, unfaitlifal, insidious, machiavelians, 
machinators, liars, perjurers, perfidious, renegades, . seducers, 
intriguers, specious, suborners, turncoats, tricksters, venal ; who 
coax, entice, boast, apostatise, palliate, exaggerate, connive, 
dodge, color, add to their story, disguise themselves, contradict 
themselves, iiatter, equivocate, finesse, smooth over matters, put 
themselves forward, grease your palms, are assuming, pervert, 
impose upon one, breathe hot and cold, shed false tears, jockey, 
misconstrue, coddle, go to extremes, whine, beat the bush, 
trim, misrepresent, save appearances, pump one, are full of 
pride, of deceit, and fraud. 

340. They will abuse you, try, overreach, trick, bamboozle, 
circumvent, hoax, dupe, involve, wheedle, use, make sport of, 
mislead, surprise, and sell you. They will teach you better 
than we can teach ourselves the different shades under which 
the action of deceiving appears ; they are formidable serpents 
in the country that bears them, whose inhabitants they are 
always ready to bite. 

341. The factitious demonstrations and the vice of deception 
vanish before uprightness, frankness, naturalness, sincerity, 
naivety, ingenuousness, candor, rectitude, simplicity, veracity, 
loyalty, fealty, good faith, artlessness, guilelessness. 

342. Such is good and evil from you toward me. Others are 
equally the subject of it. In their case again, as in my own, I 
have to create the first, not destroy it ; destroy the second, not 
create it, etc. Application. Between persons at peace we will 
avoid being mar-plots, brands, an incitement or sources of dis- 
cord. Between persons who are at enmity, we should be agents 
of peace and reconciliation, understanding how to conduct, 
manage and be impartial. 

343. It is of moment to induce the classes invested with offi- 
cial station, numerous in the social order, and those of subordi- 
nates, still more numerous, so liable to injure each other 
through lack of personal qualities and habits, which causes 
great derangement in an important branch of human relations, 
to place themselves under the brilliant light afforded by this 
chapter of ethics, in order that they may comprehend that to 
command is to prescribe a duty, and follow up its performance, 
that a thing to be done by Peter under the guiding finger of 
Paul is one reason more rather than less to treat themselves as 

4* 



82 



other men, and that on the part of him who commands (chief, 
master, foreman, director), pride, contempt, hrutality, incivil- 
ity, are disorders as inexcusable as a scowl, heedlessness and 
arrogance in the subordinate. 

THE GOOD AND EYIL OF OTTE NEIGHBOR IN HIS PEESON AND 

ESTATE. 

They are such as we have established them for ourselves. 



SPIRIT. 

SEis^SIBILITY. 

844. Eefer to other articles on the same topics — 51, 279. 

ACTIVITY, AS IT OOlS^OERis^S SENTIMENTS. 

845. To make it known to our neighbor, to teach him to deve- 
lop it, to induce him to do it by making him comprehend the 
importance of the sensibility, is all what we can do for him 
in relation to this faculty. 

UNDERSTANDING. 

846. Men are entirely dependent on one another as regards 
intelligence. We have a striking illustration of this in the two 
sons of the peasant, one of whom has been trained at college 
and the other under the paternal roof. 

847. Application Conceening Sounds. — Those who hire a 
house are exposed to annoyance by walking, conversation, 
moving of furniture, games, balls, etc. The practice of an art, 
cries, songs, races, diversions, within hearing of houses, disturb 
public quiet by night. 

ACTIVITY RELATING TO THE UNDERSTANDING. 

848. It is in our power to enlighten our neighbor in regard 
to this faculty and its different operations, to direct the latter . 
in him, to operate in the different causes of the strength and 
weakness of the former. 

THE BODY. 

PASSIVITY. 

849. See reference 171. .. . We w^ill here set down the evil 
expressed by the following words: To beat, to cudgel, to 
wound, to burn, to buffet, to mangle, to chip, to lash, to slap, 



83 



to strike, to rend, to lacerate, to gash, to crush, to tire out, to 
bruise, to torture, to wliip, to fustigate, to stamp under foot, 
to chib, to scratch, to thrash, to martyrize, to scalp, to scald, to 
bite, to pinch, to pommel, to drub, to push about, to box. A 
fillip. Snap. Slap. Knock. Blow. To feather and tar. 

350. The authors of such deeds (the most serious among 
them) are branded with the epithets unnatural, barbarous, wild, 
cruel, ferocious, tigers, executioners. If they attempt to pro- 
duce death, they are branded as assassins, murderers (hired 
murderers), and sanguinary, if they devour their victims, as 
ogres, anthropophagi, cannibals, man-eaters. Tiger thirsting 
for blood. 

CORPOREAL ACTIVITY. 

351. Reference, 183. . . . TVe may act upon the causes of 
strength and weakness in the physical activity ot our neighbor. 
We may aid our neighbor in performing certain movements, 
either by operating in his presence, as we train a child to danc- 
ing by keeping time before him, or it may be by joining our 
efforts to his, as a writing-master guides the hand of his pupil, 
a nurse in an infirmary aids his patient who tries to rise and 
walk. We may altogether compel his movements; thus the 
police will drag a malefactor to prison. Finally, we embarrass 
and arrest them : a man who is tied, bound, confined, chained, 
shut up, immured, incarcerated, has lost his physical liberty in 
a more or less complete manner. 

352. It is outrageous for any one to drag him, pull him about, 
shake, toss, throw, or push him, turn him about, expel or drive 
him away. 

353. We ought to compel our neighbor to fulfill his active 
duties ; not force him to violate his negative duties ; to stop 
him when about to violate his negative duties, and not thwart 
him when about to perform his positive duties. This follows 
from the duties already established, to the performance or viola- 
tion of which our neighbor is a stepping-stone. The govern- 
ment compels a township to make the parish roads ; the gov- 
ernment is the first cause of this good. A robber says to you : 
" Your purse, or your life!" and you cast him your purse; it is 
the same thing as if he were to strip you directly of your 
money. A ferry-man sinks his boat that people with their 
engines may not cross the river to put out a fire which is 
burning a forest there. In thwarting the prevention of the 
total destruction of the wood, he is a party to that destruction, 
just as he would contribute to the fall of a wall, or of an arch, 
by taking away the supp orts. 



84 



854. We act upon the entire system of our neio-bbor's activi- 
ties, either to excite or constrain them, or to t?ubject them to 
restraint, compression, or coercion, bv warnings, advice, re- 
proofs, commands, counsel, correction, exhortations, injunc- 
tions, insinuations, instigations, menaces, lectures, observations, 
orders, persuasion, complaints, prohibitions, provocations, i)rav- 
ers, recommendations, remonstrances, reprimands, reprehen- 
sions, reproaches, solicitations, suggestions, by teasing him, 
spurring him, conjuring, engaging, goading, and stimulating 
him. 

355. Among the applications to be made of those magnificent 
principles, let us confine ourselves to a single one. When the 
activity of our neighbor operates in the direction of the viola- 
tion of duties, I ought to stop him ; therefore I ought to defend 
myself >vhen attacked. I ought equally to defend, sustain, aid 
every man who is the object of unjust aggression. It is upon 
this principle that the strongest interfere in the struggles of the 
weakest; that the five great powers of Europe keep all the 
rest in tutelage, and that in 1839 they -each had a fleet on the 
shore of the Ottoman Empire to influence the nmtual action of 
the Sultan of Constantinople and the Viceroy of Egypt. But 
to repel is not to do evil, to destroy good. I ought to injure 
the aggressor only as long as that is indispensable to arrest his 
activity. Here, again, we must follow the principle that be- 
tween two evils it is necessary, etc., and between two good 
things, etc., (276.) You would not thrust a sword through an 
individual who should run toward you to give you a box on the 
ear. If he is endeavoring to maim, to kill you, if unable to do 
it otherwise, you have the right to stop him by maiming and 
killing him. 

356. A thoughtful man, w^hen he is threatened only with 
slight blows, with a few rents in his clothes, does not defend 
himself ; but by his patience and his dignity, he confounds his 
enemy, or he makes him pay dear for his brutal aggression 
through the tribunals. The more weak the oppressed are, the 
more binding upon the strong is the obligation to be their pro- 
tectors. 

357. One does violence to a man when one seeks to obtain 
by force from his activities the violation of his duties. If this 
end is sought by besetting, importuning, and urging him, the 
person so doing is a tempter ; a briber, seducer, if it is done 
by the lure of promises; a stumbling-block, a sickly sheep, if 
it is through the influence of example, which is always great 
in marked and distinguished men. He who attains his end is a 
corruptor, a pernicious man, a plague, a pest. 



85 



858. When we are under the influence of a stronger, or 
greater than ourselves, we ouglit not to allow him to throw liis 
grapnel over ns, to rule over and humble our minds, make tools 
of us. But if we cannot escape subjection, let us suffer every- 
thing rather than be his flunkeys, his creatures, his tools, his 
satellites. Before whoever it may be, let us never be low, 
creeping, cringing, servile, sneak, and mercenary, but let us 
know how to preserve the freedom of our souls in a noble 
independence. 

859. Slavery, captivity, bondage, is the use of the activity of 
one man by another to the interest alone of the latter. The 
cessation of slavery is enfranchisement, emancipation. By 
slavery we violate the duty of not hindering our neighbor to 
develop his spiritual faculties, to procure the comforts of life, 
not to cause him painful emotions. It gives occasion to kidnap- 
ping, ill-treatment, contumacy, rebellions, animosities, to scenes 
of murder and carnage. 

SPEECH. 

860. A man can have knowledge of sounds, produce them, 
apprehend their sense only so far as they have been articulated 
in his ear, and the thing which they express shall have been 
made known to him. He speaks a language well, if he hears 
it well spoken ; ill, if he hears it ill spoken. Thus, men owe 
their speech with its defects and perfections to other men, who 
again teach them the good and bad use to make of it, and have 
the power to force and arrest that branch of their activity. 

THE STOMACH. 

861. It is by performing in the presence of our neighbor the 
movements and the attitudes connected with the act of eating ; 
by informing him of the good and bad use of food, by acting 
even upon his activity that we can be useful to him on this 
side of himself. 

862. A frequent abuse among country people is to make, 
through an ill-understood kindness, a relative or friend, and 
particularly children, by dint of urging, take more food than 
they can bear. Certain people imagine that it would be hardly 
polite not to eat and drink with those to whom a refection has 
been tendered, and thereupon when wanting nothing, and even 
when sick, they overload their stomach with food w^hich is 
very harmful. These are weaknesses, which a little reason and 
education should remove. 



86 



363. WE OUGHT TO AVOID DUELLING. 

The duel or single combat, monomacliy, is a combat between 
two persons entered into voluntarily by the parties with the 
purpose of avenging an injury. 

We ought to avoid an evil that threatens us, ^ But the great- 
est misfortunes hang over the heads of duellists. They may be 
crippled, exposed to diseases and sufferings without end, and 
finally reduced to inaction, and through this to beggary and the 
most frightful misery. Death itself is the issue of a great 
number of duels. These facts, established by daily experience, 
finally redound to the injury of wife, children, or one's entire 
kindred. 

Therefore duelling should be avoided. 

What can justify your case, you who have injured? If 
you are vanquished, you are a fool for having suffered your- 
self to be compelled to pay so disastrously, a debt which you 
might have discharged by excuses, apologies, or a simple hum- 
bling of your pride. If you are a conqueror, you are a flagrant 
malefactor, who have twice injured your neighbor in his dearest 
interests. Conqueror and conquered, you are at once a male- 
factor and a fool. 

Who can justify you, you who have been injured ? If you 
are conquered you are a fool and a blunderer that you con- 
sented to expose yourself to the sword's point, or to the dis- 
charge of a gun, in search of a satisfaction, instead of which a 
catastrophe overtook you, forgetting that of two evils we must 
choose the least. If you are conqueror, you are an oppressor, 
an extortioner, since you obtain from your debtor a hundred 
and a thousand times more than he owes you. Conqueror and 
conquered, you are pressed by the weight of both epithets. 

864. Individuals who are affected with the strange mania for 
battles, and seek only wounds and bruises, are the founders of 
the family of bullies, hectors, quarrelers, fighters, boxers, 
shoulder-hitters, blusterers, swashers, bruisers. Prize-Sghters. 

OF MUEDER. 

865. Murder is the destruction of the human being for the 
present life. If every thing in a man is good, both body and 
soul, his destruction is the destruction of the good. If there is 
good and evil in him, so that the first is superior to the second, 
and that his existence is preferable to non-existence, his des- 
truction is again a destruction of the good. If there be nothing 
good in him, or if the evil prevails over the good, by destroying 
him, we destroy only an evil. 



87- 



3G6. Let no one think that we are about to sanction, in tl)c 
consequences of this last proposition, tlie doctrines of certain 
barbarous tribes who put to death their old, infirm, and suffer- 
ing parents. Istly. In misfortunes, human nature desires 
death. But when this appears, man is immediately seized with 
inexpressible anguish, which makes him prefer life, (the fable 
of the woodman and Death), and which the murderer himself 
feels. 2ndly. "We know how strongly men are inclined to evil 
and destruction. Such practices would soon render a people 
inhuman and ferocious. The evils engendered by the destruc- 
tion of unhappy persons are greater than those which one 
would extinguish. Hence the proposition, ^'We ought to des- 
troy unhappy humanity " is rendered null by the proposition, 
" Between two evils we should choose the least." 3dly. The 
present life is the vestibule to a better world. The evils of life 
are trials ordained by the creator in order that we may deserve 
the blessings to come. They ought then to be regarded as 
blessings. Now, we ought not to destroy the good. 

367. When our neighbor is to us a cause of destruction, of 
great injuries in our person and fortune, we have then a right 
to destroy him, as we have already said: Better kill the devil 
than suffer one's self to be killed by the devil. But there 
would be too much danger, when this cause is only a remote 
one, to surrender to private persons the exercise of this right. 
It should always be under the guardianship of society, restrict- 
ing it, so far as individuals are concerned, to extreme cases. 
(See civil laws.) Let us then conclude that, with the exception 
of extreme cases, 

We ought not to destroy other men. 

868. The murder of any man whatever, is homicide ; of a 
father, or a mother parricide ; of a brother, fratricide ; of an 
infant, infanticide ; of a king, regicide. 

369. Different modes of taking life: killing, slaying, beating 
to death, suffocating, burning, decapitating, beheading, cutting 
into pieces, dismembering, crucifying, fusillading, guillotining, 
hewing, immolating, stoning, massacring, cannonading, drown- 
ing, hanging, pounding, pistoling, poniarding, cleaving asunder, 
throwing from a precipice, breaking on a wheel, sabring, 
lynching, bleeding, sacking, quartering, impaling, poisoning, 
stifling, strangling, disemboweling, starving, stabbing, flaying. 
Cut-throat. 

370. We have exhibited the crime of two duellists and of an 
assassin. Alas! A thousand men arrayed against a thousand, 
ten thousand against ten thousand, a hundred thousand against 
a hundred thousand, clad in their gala dress, to the sound of 



88 



music, provided with terrible instruments of death, drilled by 
finished tactics, after a few hours of battle, leave the ground 
strewn with corpses, saturated and reeking with blood, and the 
air resounding with the cries of the wounded, and death-rattle 
of the expiring. Come, dear child, and weep with us, and be 
filled with horror at the frightful scenes. Doubtless we must 
resist an enemy, meet him face to face, and overthrow him. 
But if nations, which are sisters as men are brothers, like pri- 
vate persons, love justice; if like private persons, they know 
how to consult moral philosophy, which will always teach them 
in what consists justice and injustice, as well as private persons, 
they will have no occasion to cultivate a courage for defense, 
because there will be no aggression. 

871. External objects are necessary to our neighbor as to 
ourselves. The duty of putting physical objects at his disposal, 
is the same as that of producing in his personality results which 
could not be reached without the employment of them. We 
can have here to examine this important question : Ought 
we to give, grant, yield, concede to a neighbor our property by 
stripping, divesting, dispossessing ourselves for his sake ? 

872. WE OTTGHT TO TIELD TO OUR NEIGHBOE OUR SUPERFLUOUS 
PROPERTY. 

1. The sole reason that could authorize us to retain it, is that 
the property is needful to ourselves; but it is useless. In 
divesting ourselves, we violate no duty to ourselves. 

2. You doubtless believe yourselves obliged not to prevent 
your brother from taking possession of an object which is the 
property of no one. Now, your superfluous property is not 
yours, is not an enlargement, an extension of your being. A 
rich soil that does not act directly or indirectly upon a tree, 
does not belong to that tree. Gardeners take from a tree the 
superfluous soil about it, and spread it around another tree that 
needs it. They do not regard the second as dependent upon 
the first on account of any useless shoots that the first may feed. 
Do not expect then to be owner of your superfluities because 
they serve to nourish your debauchery, luxury, and avarice. 

373. It is not, however, the case that you who are hungry 
can reach the superfluities of such a rich man. 1. You cannot 
well distinguish in what consist the superfluities of others, 
which inseparably blended with the necessary, the useful, and 
the agreeable, exhibit no very appreciable line of demarcation ; 
and often such an one appears to be possessed of superfluities, 
w^io has only what is necessary in order to live, to manage his 
affairs decently, or is even on the brink of ruin. Do we not 



89 



daily read in tbe public journals : " The house of so and so lias 
just failed ; its liabilities amount to 3, 4, 6 hundred thousand 
dollars ; its assets to 2, 3, or 5 hundred thousand ! 2. A 
wealthy person may bestow gifts of which we know nothing, 
give employment to industry. 3. There are industries which 
essentially contribute to the prosperity of a nation, and which 
can be carried on only by the possession of great resources. 
Great capitalists are needed to aid governments, which are 
often compelled to have recourse to loans. 4. The rich man 
will defend what you seek to take from him, and accidents will 
happen. Do not attempt what governments themselves have 
never .attempted except at the greatest risk. Whatever her 
fondness for flowers, the young girl renounces them without re- 
gret, when she can reach them only amid a thick cluster of 
acacia boughs, or those of the thorn. 5. For the good order 
of society, the civil law punishes as a theft, tbe taking of any 
object whatever from another. 

3T4. If it were necessary strictly, to give only of one's super- 
fluities, tbe lives of the unfortunate would be often jeopardized. 
■ 'J'he duty of taking the least of two evils, the greater of two 
blessings, still makes privations in their behalf obligating 
upon us. 

375. Application, We shall then give food to our brother 
who is hungry, drink to our brother who is thirsty, raiment to 
our brother who is naked. We shall warm him when he is 
cold. We shall take him under our roof when he lacks shel- 
ter. We shall provide him with the bed he may need for 
his nightly rest. We shall tender him assistance when he is 
sick. We shall not refuse him what we can lend him from our 
furniture, dishes, utensils, etc. 

376. We ought to create our neighbor's good. Then we ought 
of his physical possessions render fit for his use what is not so. 
Application. You, tillers of the soil, plough and sow the fields 
of your neighbor who is sick, or whose cattle are so. Gather 
in his sheaves, and his hay. Collect the stone, lime, sand, and 
wood adapted to the rebuilding of l^s house which has fallen, 
or has just been burned. You, masons, sons of toil, go and 
labor a few days on this house. Joiners, carpenters, brick- 
layers, blacksmiths, lock-smiths, make for him the objects of 
your art. By these services, which will cost you little, 
you will restore his dwelling to your fellow-citizen whom 
the losses of an instant have cast upon the street. In a town- 
ship, when an accident deprives a private person of the neces- 
saries of life, let people in comfortable circumstances provide 
the raw material, the artisans, the hand of the workman, let 



90 



tliem hasten with equal ardor to snatch him from the misery 
that has so suddenly come upon him ! 

877. Our neighbor ceases to have any right to our action, audi 
donations of our property when he is able to act and acquire: 
for himself. Hence it is proper to refuse alms to the poor whoi 
can work. Alms should be refused them to compel them to^ 
abandon their destitute condition, which is a great degradation., 
They should be refused them in order to prevent the many 
vices which insinuate themselves among that class. The 
means of rendering this refusal practicable, and securing its 
results, are : 1, that the inhabitants of a township should 
deposit their gifts in the hands of worthy persons ; 2, that the 
latter should proceed to inquire who are truly necessitous, 
and should distribute among them the gifts in proportion to 
their wants ; 3, that no one should ever give at the door. It 
is plain that by this method of procedure, the wandering in the 
streets of those repulsive bands of needy persons, their vaga- 
bond life, and the disorders that attach to it, would be pre- 
vented. Work, labor, occupation, these are the true alms to 
bestow on the needy who have the full use of their faculties. 

378. He who violates these duties is called avaricious, nig- 
gardly, sordid, penurious, wolfish, illiberal, inhospitable, un- 
kind. 

379. He who fulfills them is serviceable, hospitable, chari- 
table, liberal, a quality which in the great becomes generosity 
and munificence. 

380. Applicatio7i of the duty to prevent the destruction of the 
physical good of our neighl)or. When a conflagration breaks 
out, let us hurry to rescue from the flames the houses, furni- 
ture, linen, etc., of our neighbor. This is what people are 
ready to do. But alas! it is quite usual that objects which 
have escaped the fire do not escape thieves. In case of inunda- 
tions, avalanches, earthquakes, etc., let us bring to bear the 
same zeal. It is well here to examine to what extent our zeal 
should proceed in cases of the imminent danger of ruin to the 
property or person of our neighbor. Everything is explained by 
the principles " Between two evils " . . ^' Between two good 
things." . . . (27 6.) To exhibit zeal is to expose one's self to great 
wounds or to death for the sake of our neighbor. It is wrong 
for a man to risk his life to save a hovel. A father whose sole 
labor provides food for a whole family should not expose himself 
for a drowning child, for worthless individuals suffocating in the 
flames. These latter should peril themselves for him. But 
wherever it is possible, devotion does not stop to consider, but 
rushes forward. 



91 



881. Application of the duty not to destroy good conditions^ 
and to not create the had at the same time, in the i^hysical yrop- 
erty of our neighbor. Of this property we should mar, overturn, 
break, crack, cut, crush, mark, crumple, corrupt, disfigure, tear, 
detace, derange, displace, spoil, devastate, alter, curtail, damage, 
break into, shatter, fracture, bruise, soil, Ulcerate, mutilate, up- 
set, scorch, pillage, defile, subvert, ruin nothing. 

882. We ought not to destroy the good forms of things that 
appertain to our neighbor. With greater reason we should not 
destroy the substance belonging to hini. Now the with- 
drawal of physical goods from our neighbor, implies, so far as 
he is concerned, a real destruction of them, both as to their 
quality and substance. Let us beware, then, not to cheat, 
steal, waste, crib, tear down, live upon, rob the property of 
others. Let us not plunder, rifle, swindle, supplant, harrass, 
fleece our fellows. Let us not pilfer, and squander the smallest 
elements of their property. Let us not dispossess them, dispoil 
them of it, by snatching it from them, invading them, juggling, 
extorting, or taking from them, by carrying off", ravishing, seizing, 
usurping, concealing it, to take possession of it for ourselves, to 
hold, occupy, retain, and appropriate it to ourselves. Let us 
avoid larceny, encroachments, bankruptcies, confiscations, smi.g- 
gling, competitions, depredations, peculations, embezzlements, 
exactions, dispossessions, false weights and measures, malversa- 
tion, usury, secret profits. 

383. Let us loathe forestallers, rowdies, loafers, stock-jobbers, 
; sharks, knaves, sharpers, sheep-biters, highway-men, foot-pads, 
brigands, freebooters, villains, counterfeiters, rogues, cut-purses, 
corsairs, picklocks, monopolists, gamesters, pirates, thieves, 
bounty -jumpers, incendiaries, false-minters, shoplifters, pick- 
pockets, burglars, housebreakers, receivers of stolen goods. 
Hired workmen, domestics, clerks who do not occupy their 
time, commit theft. 

A FEW EPITHETS DEEIVING THEIR ORIGIN FROM THE OBSERVA- 
TION AND THE VIOLA.TION OF DIFFERENT DUTIES RELATIVE 
TO THE PERSON AND PROPERTY OF OUR NEIGHBOR. 

884. Good, Beneficent, benefactor, brave, charitable, com- 
plaisant, defender, discreet, favorable, humane, inolfensive, 
obliging, considerate, pacific, kind, protector, safe-guard, savior, 
aid, assistance, stay, support. 

385. Bad, Dangerous, disobliging, scourge, gallows-bird, in- 
discreet, uncharitable, inhuman, malefactor, mischievous, ma- 
licious, injurious, offensive, oppressor, persecutor, disturber, 
mar-joy, turbulent, tyrant, vampire, vulture. Banditti. Mo- 



92 



lestation. Vexation. Vandalism. To injure others wan- 
tonly. 

386. To bury and to inter him, and to desecrate his ashesi 
his grave are the last favors, and the last injury as regards 
our neighbor. (Ill-founded repugnance for those who inter or 
bury.) 

387. The performance of all our negative duties toward the 
person and property of others, constitutes in us justice, integ- 
rity, equity, probity, the contrary of wliich are injustice, in- 
iquity, dishonesty. The totality of our duties toward oui 
neighbor fulfilled as well in ourselves as toward him and his 
property, the duties negative and positive, creates in our own 
souls honesty and goodness, to which are opposed wickedness 
and flagitiousness. 

388. The duties of which we have just treated are due from 
every man to every man, from one pole to the other, from the 
east to the west. 

389. When we need our neighbor to impart to us of his pro- 
perty, to act in our behalf, we are often obliged to ask it. It 
is plain that if in preferring our request, we violate any 
duties toward him, as to be disrespectful, insolent, too bold, 
rude, and exacting, he will hasten to punish us by a refusal. 

390. ForMULAS for Requests. Sir, be so kind as to tell me 
which of these two roads I should take to reach New York. 
May I requsst you to do me a favor ? Grive me — send — pass 
me that, if you please. Will you have the goodness to lend me 
twenty dollars for six months? Will you please to write a let- 
ter for me to my relative, who urges me to answer him ? I beg 
of you to dress this wound. I beg you, I conjure you, do not 
let me die of hunger. You are so generous that I do not hesi- 
tate to hope that you will lend me your assistance in this un- 
happy affair. 

391. Do not apply to one who cannot grant your request; 
for it is always hard for a kind heart to refuse. Contempt and 
coldness are the ill-treatment which a request frequently re- 
ceives, and with which a refusal is accompanied, and humbles 
the modest soul already mortified by the necessity of request- 
ing. Delicacy requires that a refusal either to grant or to 
receive should be attended with many palliatives. 

392. Even when we are sure that the person applied to will 
not refuse a thing which we need, it is always proper to ask it, 
nnless the step be impossible or too troublesome. Beggar. 
To beg any thing secretly. 

393. How many faults and imperfections are blended with 
the performance of the duties of kindness ; how many tares 



93 



pervert it or injure its worth ! A grace or favor is granted ; 
jut how many petitions and humiliations have been exacted ; 
uhe petitioner is made to feel his want, his dependence ; tlie 
ionor demands an exorbitant gratittide • he speaks to every one 
with self-complacency of the favor granted, and thus reveals 
iistresses which should have been kept concealed ; when oppor- 
tunity offers, he makes it an occasion of reproach. He persuades 
himself that a trifle is a great affair. A kind deed is per- 
formed : but it is done reluctantly and against the inclination. 
When we attempt to restore our neighbor who lias gone astray 
from the path" of duty, we exhibit ill-temper, haughtiness, an- 
ger, contempt, and use harsh and offensive language. Conduct 
yourself towards your brother who has fallen into error, as 
judges on the bench so admirably do, and be not unfeeling and 
intolerant. 

894. We feel a friendship, an affection, an attachment for a 
person ; but if we watch ourselves for a brief space, we shall 
not fail to perceive that these sentiments are felt toward him 
only in so far as he contributes to some interest or advantage 
of our own. At bottom, it is not he, but ourselves, that we 
love. The essential character of a donation, a gift, is to be 
gratuitous. Now, is yours such ? Is it not because you hope 
to be paid for it twofold, threefold, tenfold that it leaves your 
hands ? If it is so, nineteen hundred years ago you were con- 
demned by Cicero, the great Eoman philosopher and moralist, 
who has described you as a shrewd dealer, but not a good man. 
Pliny also tells you that you steal away the good things of 
others by limed and baited gifts. 

395. Perform the duties of kindness without reserve. Let 
not your left hand know what your right hand doeth. Let the 
little we do and we are capable of doing, compel us to assert 
and believe the humble words: We are unprofitable ser- 
vants." 

396. A benefit, a service rendered imposes the duty of grati- 
tude, contentment, acknowledgment, thanks, upon him who 
has received it. — Ungrateful. Thankless. Thankful. 

397. How noble a thing would society be if men understood 
and fulfilled their duties towards one another ! The European, 
instead of scenes of murder and spoliation, would meet with 
friends at Cape Comorin, Cape Horn, and in New Zealand. 
There would be no need of locks, ramparts, soldiers, judges, 
nor prisons. Frenchmen would not pay for an army an annual 
tax of eighty millions of dollars, for a judiciary, police, and 
prisons, four millions, and all other nations proportionally. As 
in the times of Brian Boru, king of Ireland, jewels strewn upon 



94 



the higliway would excite no one^s covetottsness. It wonld be! 4' 
the return of that age described by Ovid, in which good-faitb 
and justice were spontaneously observ^ed without vindictive 
penalty, and without law, in which nations without fear and 
without judges, enjoyed the sweetest repose amid the most 
perfect security. 

WHAT SHOtJtD HE BO WHO HAS VIOLATED A DUTY TOWARD 
HIS NEIGHBOR? 

898. This violation is either of a duty of commission or 
omission. The violation of a duty of commission does not in- 
volve the obligation to repair or restore any thing. So long as 
the object of the duty exists, we are bound by the obligation 
to act; and there is a violation of ^wsitive duty as long as we 
continue not to act. However long delayed may be the per- 
formance of the duty, there is always an obligation to the per- 
formance : better late than never. 

399. The violation of a duty of omission involves the obliga- 
tion to repair and to restore. 

Proof. We ought not to create the evil of our neighbor, to 
destroy liis good, etc., that is to say, we ought not to be cause 
of the creation of the evil, of the destruction of the good. jS'ow, 
so long as we have not repaired any thing, or restored any 
thing, we are the cause of the creation ot the evil, of the 
destruction of the good of others. The violation of negative 
duties is incessant. It is, therefore, only by reparation and 
restitution that we come into unison again with the negative 
obligation. 

]^ot only reason, instinct even demonstrates this truth. You 
spatter yom* neighbor, you spit upon him by mistake : you at 
once seize your handkerchief to wipe off the mud and the spit- 
tle from his clothes. You have broken your friend's carriage 
which he had lent you ; you say to him : I dare not return 
your carriage in the state it now is ; I w^ill send it back as 
soon as I shall have had it mended." " He who breaks glass 
must pay for it," says a popular adage. 

Reparation and restitution can frequently be made only by 
returning equivalents. I cannot reproduce the trees of yours 
wdiich I have broken, torn up by the roots, but I will harvest 
your wheat. The pig which I have stolen from you has been 
eaten, but you shall have my bullock. 

400. Do I not in this case violate the duties toward myself, 
of not inflicting suffering upon myself, of not depriving myself 
of my physical good, and do not these obligations neutralize 
the foregoing ? 1. When you have derived an advantage from 



95 

ihe thing taken, you deprive yourself of nothing by restoring 
its equivalent, since that very thing returned would have been 
consumed, if that belonging to your neighbor had not taken its 
place. 2. It was by acting against your neighbor that you 
acted against yourself; you do nothing contrary to your obliga- 
tions toward yourself by reparation and restitution : an effect 
must revert to its cause. 8. Eeparation and restitution are the 
fulfillment of negative duties. Kow, the negative duties exist 
fully between their subject and object, and without the restric- 
fcion and suspension of positive duties. 

401. The good of our neighbor, the realization of which we 
have prevented, the evil, the destruction of which we have 
hindered, should be repaired, the second as if we had expressly, 
directly caused it, and the first in a measure proportioned to the 
degree in which it approached an actual good. 

402. We are responsible for the prejudices we have caused, 
in all their issues and necessary consequences. 

403. Like our other duties towards our neighbor, that of repa- 
ration and restitution is to be modified by propositions: Be- 
tween two evils " . . . . Between two things good" .... 
(276.) 

404. Debts properly so called, when they have become due^ 
are real restitutions to be made. 

405. We should restore a thing found to its owner, if he 
can be discovered. After suitable inquiries, if the owner is 
not found, if you need the thing, make use of it. If you do not 
need it, give it to the poor. Things loaned should be returned 
to their owners, as soon as the purpose for which they have 
been lent, has been accomplished. 

406. The obligation to repair, to restore is in proportion to 
culpability. An epileptic, in falling, breaks a mirror in your 
parlor ; you certainly would not demand of him its value. A 
thing which one has detained, or unconsciously abstracted from 
its lawful owner, or from which one has derived some ad van* 
tage, should be delivered up in any case. 

407. Ketaliation, like treatment, revenge, reprisals, reciprocity, 
compensation extinguish the obligation to repair and restore. 
There is no longer any obligation to repair and restore, when 
the thing repairs itself, is restored by a third person, or when 
the effect immediately ceases, or a volition, a word, a cor- 

I poreal movement. Nor is there any reparation or restitution, 
when there is an impossibility; but it revives whenever possi- 
bility for it reappears. 

408. The violation of positive duties leaves with us culpa- 
bility, and a disposition, with a probability of a second offense, 



96 



etc., and with our neighbor a feeling of injurj and insult, a dis- 
agreeable remembrance* 

409, The violation of negative duties is, with much greater 
reason, followed hj the same results, so that after reparation, 
restitution, or cessation of the obligation to restore and repair 
of which we have spoken, we feel there is still something to be. 
done. For example : I deprive you of a thousand dohars ; it is; 
not enough that I return them to you. I wish that Satan may 
get you; it is not enough that my volition cease. If there is 
on my part nothing beyond this, I shall be for ever banished 
from your heart. The violation of any of our duties whatever 
that concern the person and property of our neighbor, supposes 
bad sentiments, an absence of social affections, erroneous judg- 
ments, bad intentions, and want of kindly purposes. It is the 
reparation of incidentals to the shortcomings towards our 
neighbor, which are grouped about the principal fault, like the 
scions, the shoots that surround the old trunk, spring from its 
juices and from its mutilation, that is called expiation, satisfac- 
tion. All this is so precisely true that the civil laws send, 
malefactors to prison and the galleys even after they have re- 
paired their injustice. 

410, The way to expiate a fault toward our neighbor worthily, 
is to admit, avow, confess, disapprove of it, to feel sorrow, com- 
punction, repentance for it, to condemn one's self, to form the 
resolution and promise to commit it no more. The way to 
move him, to mollify him, to disarm his wrath, to avert the 
chastisement he is inclined to inflict, to remove his ill feeling, 
to regain his good will, is, with which is already mentioned, 
to make apologies, supplications for favor, and ask his forgive- 
ness. 

WHAT HE OUGHT TO DO TOWAED WHOM A DUTY HAS BEEN 
VIOLATED. 

411. He ought to demand what the violator is under obliga- 
tion to perform. There are certain duties against the violation 
of which we feel a disinclination to protest. 

412. Your positive obligations toward me give me rights and 
claim upon your efforts. By violating towaixi you an equivalent 
positive duty, I retain what is yours in indemnification of that 
of which you deprive me. You do not love me ; I shall not 
love you. You do not respect me ; I shall not respect you. 
You do not salute me ; I shall not salute you. You do not 
assist me ; I shall not assist you. You would let the wolf de- 
vour me ; I will let the tiger swallow you. These would be in 
action exerted for an unworthy object, an evil of relation. ^ , 



91 



413. We ought to act upon the energies of our neighbor by 
chastisement. But the violation of our positive duties toward 
him, a matter which is always within our power, always op- 
tional, is a very ready way of chastisement to bring him to the 
performance of his positive duty towards ourselves, and if he 
persists in his purpose, to repentance and atonement. 

414. The violation of a positive duty towards me indicates 
and sometimes involves a disposition to violate them all. In 
this case, I have the right to violate all mine towards you. 

415. By destroying, in the hands of our neighbor the good 
which he has taken from us, by ruining the advantages drawn 
from the wrong he has done us, or their equivalent, we have 
acted only against ourselves. This may happen when we are 
assured that our neighbor will make no restitution, or repara- 
tion. At bottom, in this case, we deprive ourselves of nothing ; 
we but free ourselves from the mortification we should expe- 
rience at seeing our detriment turning to the advantage of the 
wrong-doer. 

416. The neighbor who has caused you a loss without profit- 
ing by it, will repair it, or atone for it, or, if reparation be im- 
possible, will be disposed to reparation or not. In the first case, 
if you do him a similar wrong which is not of the nature of a com- 
pensation, you will be as wicked as he. Moreover, by impos- 
ing upon yourself an obligation to make reparation and atone- 
ment, which by augmenting equally with his, abolishes and 
neutralizes it, you violate the duty not to prevent the creation 
of your own good, the destruction of your own evil ; you incite 
your neighbor to continue to injure you. In the second case, 
in doing him the wrong which he has done you, by extinguish- 
ing his obligation to make reparation to you, you free yourself 
from the mortification of seeing it constantly violated ; you 
have a real pleasure in telling him: *'Well, we are even !'' 
This wrong is at the same time a just punishment to bring 
him to make atonement. 

417. The losses occasioned to the wrong-doer by your de- 
fense do not relieve him of the duty to make reparation for 
those he has caused. The reason is that he is the prime cause 
of all that has happened to himself, for he provoked the re- 
sistance. 

418. Certain violations of negative duties suppose and imply 
in their subject a disposition to violate all his positive duties 
toward a person, and even a great number of other negative 
duties. 

419. The reciprocities on our neighbor's good and ill that da 



98 



not spring from our person, are at the same time adverse to us : 
for example, an invective for an invective, a grimace for a 
grimace. But there are some which, so to speak, do not de- 
pend upon us, which are the necessary consequence of the crim- 
inality of our neighbor toward us and of his initiative. Thus 
you cannot avoid antipathy, hatred, horror in presence of any 
one who cherishes antipathy, hatred, horror for you. You say : 
I cannot feel love for that man who does not love me ; it is too 
much for me." 

420. If our neighbor does not perform the duty of expiation, 
above all by resolving never to fall again into the same error, 
in spite of the restitution and reparatiom obtained, and the 
reprisals upon him; in a word, notwithstanding the extinction 
of his obligation to make reparation, we have still the right to 
withdraw from him and put an end to our benefits, to act 
against his interests in order to punish him, and prevent him 
from violating the same duties in the sequel. 

421. The statements hitherto made sufficiently show in what 
just vengeance consists. In any event, its end may be obtained 
by kind deeds. To render benefits for injuries, service for ill- 
offices, or for forgetfulness of the duties of kindness, is the 
most irresistible, the most efficient, the most noble kind of 
vengeance. They show with equal clearness what is unjust 
vengeance. The vindictive man is cruel in his retaliation, with- 
out regard to the will or the future development of reparation, 
restitution and expiation. He violates more duties toward his 
enemy than his enemy has violated towards himself, and more 
than his right to punish permits. He is rigorous, exaeting, irre- 
concilable, inflexible, inexorable, unfeeling, implacable, pitiless, 
merciless, rancorous, severe, recriminates, rejects compromises, 
all forgiveness, does not pardon, and is gorged with ven- 
geance. 

422. Eeasonable vengeance is exorable, compassionate, pliant, 
placable, indulgent, long-suffering, is conciliatory, and disposed 
to make satisfaction and to be reconciled, excuses, proceeds 
gently, pardons, forgives, forgets. 

423 . Creditor, if you are not yourself in pressing want^ wait 
upon your debtor who cannot pay when his debt falls due, 
without making himself destitute, without distressing himself 
excessively, or without missing a good bargain. Avoid extor- 
tionary ways ; spare him expense when his incapacity to pay, 
his lack of resources does not exist through his fault. If you 
are very rich, and he very poor, remit him his debt. Is it not 
revolting to see furniture, household implements, the linen of 
an indigent widow thrown into the street, sold at auction by a 



99 



tiger in hnman shape, who has an income of one, two, three, 
four or ten thousand dollars ! 

424. There are people who thoughtlessly run into debt with- 
out reflecting that interest and expenses will ruin them. There 
are some who give themselves little trouble about paying their 
debts, or most grievously wronging a creditor. There are some 
who take delight in not paying, a delight so great as to out- 
weigh the little honor that remains, or the shame that the 
presence of a creditor causes them, which makes them sneak 
and slink away, and conceal themselves, at whatever distance 
they may see him. There are some who cherish no evil inten- 
tion, who could discharge their obligations, if they were dis- 
posed to use a little effort, to infuse more order into their 
affairs, but who are so negligent, so slothful, so little oppressed 
by a debt, that payment must be torn from them with pincers ; 
so much the worse for them if the rents are great. 

425. The rule which is settled in regard to things indifferent 
demands that we should not make reprisals for trifling wrongs. 
Yet it is often this in particular which disturbs good harmony 
among neighbors. A hen has been scratching in a garden, doves 
have picked up seeds in it, cats have played among plants, a dog 
has trampled them down. The owner falls into a passion ; he 
lames the animals ; he violently reproaches his neighbor. The 
latter recriminates. So these neighbors quarrel for nothing. 
For, the obligation to make reparation is impaired through a 
lack of purpose, disapprobation in the owner of the animals, is 
counterbalanced by the retaliation to which he is every moment 
exposed from the animals of the other. These annoyances, 
which unreasonable men can neither endure nor overlook, make 
their appearance in myriads of ways; 

426. There is often danger in demanding, claiming reparation 
for a wrong suffered. You complain that Peter has stolen your 
money. Peter hears of the story which you have set afloat 
about him. He sues you for slander. You cannot prove the 
fact of which you accuse him, although it is real. You are 
condemned to pay the costs of the trial, and to pay damages 
for slander. 

427. The risk of retaliation is no less imminent than that of 
law-suits. You wish to-day to return the blow from a club 
which you received yesterday twenty are rained upon the 
nape of your neck. (The horse and the stag.) You make 
yourself good for a bag of wheat which an individual has 
stolen from you, by taking his sheaves. He has his proofs. 
He subjects you to the weight of a shameful conviction, and in 
ail simplicity, makes you pass for a thief, while you are compelled 



100 



to declare him, an arrant rogue, the most honest man in the 
world. 

428. The retaliation, the compensation being judicially proved, 
a punishment will still be inflicted upon you to teach you that 
individuals are not to take justice into their own hands in mat- 
ters reserved to the exclusive attention of the tribunals. 

429. And in how many cases is it not better to renounce one's 
rights than to demand them by the intervention of the trib- 
unals! It is a proverb that one must gain seven law-suits to 
ruin one's self. In 1828, a countryman lost at Besan9on (France) 
a law-suit, in which the ownership to a tenth of an acre of 
land (about $10) was in question, which after four years' con- 
tinuance immersed him in costs and expenses to the amount of 
eight hundred dollars. An article in the journal **La Presse" 
(Paris), of February, 1837, mentions the case of a suit for the 
amount of a penny and a half having cost eight hundred dol- 
lars to the losing party. Heaven grant that such examples may 
preserve us from the indulgence of a spirit of litigation, con- 
tention, intrigue, and law-suits, and may render us disposed to 
conciliation and the settlement of difficulties ! 

430. Causes of Law-Suits. — 1. Ignorance, which is either 
unacquainted with the laws, or which knows not how to ad- 
minister affairs in an orderly manner, nor judge of its rights, 
makes memoranda, notes unintelligible, undecipherable, inex- 
plicable ; draws contracts and deeds of defective, ambiguous, 
equivocal, obscure, and contradictory character; in a word, 
whose accounts are a maze, a labyrinth. 

431. — 2. Negligence and too much Confidence, which makes 
no record of anything, neglects the bounds of estates, trusts too 
much to memory, overlooks the necessity of reducing to writ- 
ing, on the pretext that there is good faith on both sides, and 
that it would be a sort of insult to demand the signature of a 
relative or a friend who is incapable of wronging us out of a 
simple penny. 

432. — 3, Bad Faith, which makes one who is ready to pick 
flaws and raise difficulties, hope for a share in an interest which 
is not his own, through the crooked paths of chicane, and the 
discouragement of an opposing party. 

433. — 4. A Vindictive Spieit, which is ever ready to risk 
the loss of a law-suit, provided itgpay compel an adversary to 
go from tribunal to tribunal, and tnus cause him hardsliip, vex- 
ation, anxiety and expense. 

434. — 5. A False Sense of Honor, which makes ns believe 
that we incur contempt if we do not prosecute an interest at 
any price whatever. We have a right to the esteem of our 



101 



fellow-citizens as long as our conduct is in harmony with duty. 
Now, does not he who abandons a law-suit, where there is 
more to be lost than gained, fulfill a duty, that of preferring of 
two good things the greater ? 

435. Men are found in, and enter of themselves into certain 
positions or relations, called societies. The societies most im- 
portant to be considered are that of the family, civil society, 
that between master and pupil, and that between master and 
servant. 



DUTIES IN THE FAMILY RELATION. 

436. That which is good and evil for our neighbor in u», 
by reason of estrangement and want of knowledge, remains 
such only in regard to a very small number. The impossibility 
of action, the need of our action for ourselves, the pains of 
labor, the want of an object, make the series of active opera- 
tions which we have set forth, of one man to others, but dead 
obligations, give them real existence only in cases very much 
restricted. If there attaches to us any obligation toward the 
whole world, it is that of good will, of the disposition to ren- 
der aid to every one upon occasion. However, we shall some- 
where find this series ; it will be in the family relation, which 
is established for, and embraces the general happiness of life. 

HUSBAND AND WIFE. 

437. Man and woman unite, in body and material goods. 
Thenceforward the thoughts, attentions, and language of the 
one have a continual object, a steady limit in the other, and 
duties are no longer impossible through lack of scope between 
the action of the one and the good and ill of the other. For 
the pains which one of the parties experiences in toiling for the 
other, ample recompense is received in the reciprocal acts of 
this latter. Man and woman constituting but one person— 
et erunt duo in came und — the propositions X. and XI. deter- 
mine what he must do who needs his operation on his own 
behalf, and the limit to which devotion and sacrifice should go. 

438. Generally speaking, the condition of a happy marriage is 
equality ; equality of age, equality of fortune, of graces and 
defects, equality of active obligations, we might even say an 
equality of vices and virtues. — Misalliance. 

439. The violation of the positive duties of the married that 
are bound on reciprocity, implies injustice and ingratitude. Let 
us then announce the principle : The marriage contract gives 
rise between man aad woman to all the active duties set forth 



102 



throughout the foregoing chapter. The negative duties are 
comprised in it by implication. The union is for life. 

440. Of the duties of the married, in their natural state, like 
iron ore, and which are rendered as firm and strong as iron and 
steel by civil and religious laws, after being made explicit and 
consistent by mutual promises, we will review the most im- 
portant and the mode in which they are observed in the 
household. 

441. The good sentiments, — sympathy, love, respect, affection, 
tenderness, gratitude, etc., should animate the married. Most 
commonly they are totally absent fyom the heart, if souls are 
not rather poisoned by antipathy, acrimony, aversion, anger, 
hatred, ill-temper, coldness, pride. 

442. The married ought to esteem, prize, and have a mu- 
tual confidence in one another. It is to be regretted that 
they are frequently seen to despise and scorn one another. 
They owe each other a mutual good will. One party em- 
braces the existence of the good of the other, because it 
embraces his own — the non-existence of the other's ill, 
because that would draw with it his own. This woman 
is distressed for the sickness which has befallen her hus- 
band. If you analyze what passes in her mind, regret for 
the present evil, and desire for its extinction, you will see that 
her volition has reference not to the peculiar affliction of her 
husband, but to the watchings, the expense, the care and atten- 
tion which are imposed on her, and the services which she 
incurs the risk of losing. # 

443. They ought, out of regard for one another, to be neat 
and decent in their habits. l5o we not see them unclean and 
uncomely ? 

444. They owe one another gentleness, politeness, prompt 
attention, good offices, pleasant looks, considerate regard, re- 
spectful familiarity. On the contrary, do they not indulge in 
bursts of passion, fits of anger, reproaches, abusive epithets, 
hasty expressions ? Do they not pout at one another, assume 
swelling airs, and does not their familiarity often relapse into a 
low and base intercourse ? 

445. Do they take the trouble to observe the'^ules of civility 
at table, and in many households are not these regarded as silly 
observances, to which one must be excessively good-natured to 
submit ? 

446. They owe one another consultation, advice, reproof, and 
honest and just remonstrance ; but they often indulge in harsh 
language, in insulting speech, in abuse, in curses upon one 
another ; they chide, thee-and-thou^ and snarl at each other, 



103 



and dispute and quarrel. Are there not women who are con- 
stantly muttering and grumbling about the house ? They often 
decry and defame one another. The wife chiefly goes about 
proclaiming the faults and short-comings of her husband. They 
ought to live in harmony and concord, but they frequently live in 
discord and dissension. And how many times are not neighbors 
obliged to run to scenes of noise and disturbance ! In a word, when 
the husband will be toward strangers civil, accessible, affable, 
cordial, communicative, frank, and cheerful, he will be rough, 
scowling, scolding, uncivil and brutal toward his better half. 
The wife is often toward her husband exacting, capricious, 
cross, disagreeable, snappish, ugly, a downright shrew, when, 
on the appearance of a stranger, she suddenly becomes affec- 
tionate, mild, engaging, complaisant, and gentle. And were 
they false when, upon their betrothal, they so well concealed 
and disguised their true selves from one another? What a sur- 
prise, and how great the disappointment within a short time 
after the marriage, to see one another as they really are, odious 
with ugly traits! Is that jade false, who but a moment after 
she has told her husband that she loved him as she loved her- 
self, speaks to him in a haughty and disrespectful manner, or, 
seized with a whim or a fit of ill-temper, stamps and leaps 
about the floor, and slams the door in his face ? 

447. The married do not at once act upon each other's sen- 
sibilities in such a manner as to destroy their good sentiments, 
and cause them to be bad ; this is brought about by the viola- 
tion of their duties. A worthy man pines away with melan- 
choly and disgust, who, by day and night, has at his side a 
woman who is sluttish, gluttonous, deceitful, lazy, prodigal, 
waspish, thieving. A virtuous woman is overwhelmed with 
affliction, who is continually made sensible that she has become 
the lot of a husband wlio is frivolous, inconsiderate, boastful, 
avaricious, pedantic, knavish, negligent, unfaithful, and drunk- 
ard. They have abundant means to impress one another 
favorably, by example, protection, consolation, the employment 
of their fortune, etc. 

448. The married ought particularly to acquaint one another 
with their material resources, with their incomes and expen- 
ditures, their debts and credits, to act in harmony, and advise 
and counsel with one another, as to the best means of improv- 
ing and preserving their property, and rearing their children. In 
many families, the husband plans and executes, buys, sells, makes 
and unmakes, manages and administers without having any 
communication with his wife. The latter buys, sells, earns, 
spends, and gives by stealth. Rarely do such families prosper. 



104 



We do not conceal our deeds when we act invariably in the 
sphere of our duties. Sometimes it is the unreasonable conduct 
of one party which disposes the other to act without that 
party's knowledge. Some enterprise promises a considerable 
and certain advantage. The wife, whose intellect cannot com- 
prehend the solid ideas and substantial reasons of the husband, 
will decidedly oppose it. He must avoid consulting her. A 
husband is opposed to his wife's clothing the children in 
suitable attire ; she is obliged to purchase without his knowl- 
edge. 

449. The married should take care of each other in sickness. 
How unfortunate are some ! Here is a wife bed-ridden ; there 
a husband is similarly confined by sickness, or some infirmity, 
for ten, fifteen, thirty years, or for life. Doubtless there can 
be henceforth no equality in mutual services ; but that equality 
existed on the day of the marriage, in the fact that some un- 
fortunate accident was as likely to happen to one as to the 
other. 

450. The mortifications, disappointments, insults, with which 
the married afflict each other often draw after them lingering 
diseases, of which one or the other is a victim. Among the 
educated classes such results do not occur ; but among tlie un- 
cultivated classes the conjugal abode is too often defiled by 
quarrels, by deeds of violence and cruelty, from which the wife 
particularly escapes by leaving behind her locks of hair, and 
fragments of her clothing, and bearing marks of wounds and 
bruises. 

451. Asylum of Hymen ! Yain is it that solemn ceremonies, 
festive joys, the wishes of relations and friends have inau- 
gurated it, witness of assistance and mutual protection. For 
many it is fire-arm, sword, and poison — vexations which have 
invariably destined it to be a tomb ! In a word, a matrimonial life 
of any length without a cloud, is mentioned in the newspapers 
as a thing as rare as the fall of an aerolite, or the appeai*ance of 
an aurora borealis. 

452. On the day of the marriage, as respects the use, there 
occurs a mingling of their goods, and whatever may be the 
portion brought by each, or the increase or diminution of the 
common stock, they are divided into two equal portions for the 
whole period of the matrimonial union. 

453. When one of the married couple cannot procure the ma- 
terial objects required by his or her wants, the other party 
should procure them, under the penalty of injustice, in having 
received or being bound to receive an equivalent. If one when 
able to work, does not do it, a half of the earnings of the other does 



103 

not become his, for the latter party has engaged to work for the 
i former only as long as he could not earn any thing for himself; 
moreover, he has roluntarily put himself in a condition of in- 
ability to assist his partner when that partner can do nothing. 

454. He who consumes beyond his needs from the common 
\ stock, wrongs the other to the extent of half the excess ; for 

the latter owes the former of her own earnings only in the pro- 
portion of his legitimate wants. Moreover, by the consump- 
tion of the other half of the excess he is liable to become inca- 
pable of assisting his consort. 

455. Cicero explains the dependence of married parties upon 
each other, their mutual helpfulness in the acquisition and pre- 
servation of property. 

The conjugal bond was ordained by nature to be the most 
" delightful and useful tie in life. Mortals derive from it great 
*' assistance and great advantages. As the parties are not to 

live in solitude and in the open air like wild beasts, but in a 
" house, beneath a roof, 'it was necessary that one of them 
" should acquire by labor and industry, without doors, and ex- 

posed to the action of the elements, the things required by 
" them, and that the other within doors, should preserve, keep 

them in order, and ready for use. Nature has rendered men 
*• capable of enduring heat, cold, travel, navigation, and the 

toils of peace and war, that is to say, the labors of the field 
" and militaiy duties, and to woman, who is incapable of all 
*Hhese things, she has assigned the management of domestic 

affairs. Nature has rendered her, in consequence of her fit- 
" ness for managing the household, more timid than man ; for 
" nothing like fear, is so great an incentive to vigilance and care. 

It was necessary that man should be more hardy and vigor- 
*' ous, because being obliged to seek his subsistence in the open 
" air, at a distance from home, he must frequently repel injury 

and aggression.'' (Officia, N. 53, 54. fragm.) 

456. There are women who, by their prodigal and luxurious 
habits, waste the substance of their husbands' toils. There are 
men who, by their idleness, drunkenness, and debauchery con- 
sume the common fund, and reduce a woman to wretchedness. 
More than one wife has been no stranger to the debaucheries 
of her husband, the latter abandoning himself to drunkenness, 
as a distraction from the grievous suffering which she inflicted 
upon him by her fierce and savage temper. A friend says to 
another to whom he would show a courtesy : I do not wish 
to expose you to the crabbed greetings of my sordid wife ; let 
us enter this tavern.-' And he spends what would have sufficed 

5* 



106 



at home for a feast for the wliole family, including the stranger. 
But a wife is not bound to approve all the invitations of her 
husband. People of slender means do wrong to invite every 
chance-comer, and always to keep open table, inasmuch as their 
labor may suffer from it, and they have hardly enough for 
themselves. A sensible and prudent woman approves of invi- 
tations dictated by propriety. She does honor likewise to such 
as are not of this character, in order not to draw reproaches 
upon her husband, or to insult strangers, and to avoid passing 
for a stingy woman ; for a remedy she relies upon persuasive 
methods in private. 

457. Married parties should influence each other to secure 
the performance of their duties. This duty is specially binding 
upon the husband, whose mental and physical vigor allows him 
to influence the conduct of his wife. Whenever two or several 
free agents conspire, by a series of united actions, to produce a 
given effect, it is proper, by reason of the diversity of views 
and purposes, that direction should be given to all by a single 
will, to W'hich every one shall bend. But to man, by the supe- 
riority of his intelligence and strength, being more capable of 
it than woman, this direction belongs in the conjugal relation. 
There are very few industries that woman can exercise. When 
the wife has no dowry, the prosperity of the relation depends 
then almost solely upon the husband. He combines, as has 
been remarked, more judgment and activity : then, the man- 
agement of their common interests devolves upon him. For the 
three reasons before alleged, the man is the master, the head 
of the family ; that is to say, the woman should be subject to 
her husband. 

458. The illicit intercourse of married with other parties, 
tending to introduce diseases into the family, and alien children, 
to pervert affection, and destroy prosperity, to produce disunion, 
discord and dissension, with acts of violence and even death, 
involving a violation of plighted trust, is matter of the most 
serious character. 

459. The marriage tie is the most perfect and the most natu- 
ral condition for man. But great as are the advantages of a 
good marriage, so great is the misfortune of an ill one. A bad 
match, in which every thing goes on counter to the obligations 
of the relation, is a hell upon earth. 

^ PAKENTS AND CHILDEEN. 

460. From the enlargement of their sphere of existence, from 
the reproductive faculty which they have received from God, 
from the responsibility attaching to the fact of birth — from these 



m 



three sources spring the threefold character of the active duties 
of parents as regards the child, which are duties toward them- 
selves, by blood and love, duties of goodness, and duties of 
justice. The returns of service which thej obtain from it after- 
ward are one reason more rendering them duties which jastice 
demands. Then to deny one's paternity, to abandon the child, 
to expose it, is one of the most grievous crimes, a crime of trea- 
son against nature, in the perpetration of which the brute sinks 
the man, who, if excusable [for such acts] under an extreme 
necessity, could never be excused for neglecting to surround 
himself with the guarantees of a suitable marriage. 

THE MOST PRACTICAL APPLICATION. 

461. (Here it is that the child awakes to consciousness and 
learns to be grateful.) 

462. To nurse the child from twelve to fifteen months. To 
take it up, dress, carry, and clean it, to give it food and drink, 
to undress and put it to bed, to keep it clad in dry, neat, and 
warm garments, and to do all this for three, four, six, or eight 
years. 

463. The following are the principal sources of the accidents and 
diseases against which parents have to guard in the case of little 
children : Dainties instead of wholesome and substantial food ; 
j)ure wine and liquors ; the colds which they catch when they are 
taken up in the cool air in a state of perspiration, or when washed 
in fresh water, or by night, when their bed-clothes are thrown off; 
fires by which their garments are ignited ; the stove by contact 
with which their face is burned ; heights from which they may 
fall, as balustrades, terrace-walls, the abutments and parapets of 
bridges, the curbs of wells and fountains, the banks of streams, 
canals and rivers, chairs, pit-falls, and ladders ; masses of slight 
solidity about which they play, and which fall upon them ; mis- 
chievous games with one another ; powder, fire-arms, edged- 
tools, or sharp-pointed instruments with which they wound one 
another ; animals and carriages which pass over them. A child 
will run about with a reed or a smoking pipe in its mouth, and 
will fall and cut its throat ; another will swallow a pin or a 
needle. Children see no danger, and hence continual oversight 
is requisite in the parents. 

464. To make the child walk, and move its limbs, and not 
keep it always abed or seated, in order that its physical powers 
may become pliant ; to prevent the consequences of frequent 
falls by a turband cap. 

465. You will win from it love, affection, attachment, friend- 
ship, respect, tenderness, filial piety, by the dignity of your per- 



108 



son and conduct, by the absence of too much familiarity, and 
particularly if you first manifest similar sentiments. Many 
children experience in the presence of their parents, only con- 
straint, embarrassment, ennui, fear and disgust. This is because 
they meet in them only coldness, rudeness, indifference, faults 
and vices, impoliteness. 

466. We should cultivate the heart as if it were a field of the 
fairest flowers. "We should early develop in it the social affec- 
tions and virtuous sentiments, by suppressing the slightest 
germs of the contrary sentiments (279, 546) ; for all others, let 
the soil be so prepared as to receive the good, and reject the 
bad. Anger, moroseness, and fear are propagated by example. 
In order to guard their children against these terrible passions, 
the parents ought themselves to guard against them ; above all, 
they should not render them timid by foolish stories. 

467. Like the other faculties, the understanding is immature i 
in the soul of the child. The parents, then, have to call it forth 1 
and develop it. Mothers have a thousand expedients to accom- 
plish that result. They bring the child in contact with as 
many pleasant objects as possible, and say : " This is such a 
thing — this cause produces such an effect — by such means, etc." 
Its intellect, a truly virgin soil, readily receives the impression 
of the idea, and tenaciously retains it. At the most tender age 

it is capable of learning a great deal. Its imagination must be 
enlarged by the grandeur of the physical world, and the variety 
of its forms, by taking it abroad, and letting it explore every 
point of the localities about it within the range of its vision. 
The notions of good, evil, and duty, in particular, should be 
awakened in it. It is impossible to inspire it too early with a 
sense of moral truth ; for until fifteen or seventeen years of age, 
it acts from a sort of spurious instinct which renders it a mon- 
grel between man and the brute. It should never be led into 
error. Parents can only begin the edifice of its instruction ; 
they should send it to school. 

468. We should converse with children, and make them talk 
a great deal. The name of every thing presented to their 
minds should be pronounced to their ear. They should hear no 
jargon, no vulgar language, no nick-names, no imitation of ridi- 
culous words. Their faculty for acquiring language by conver- 
sation is surprising. 

469. For their rest at night, parents should have separate 
rooms, and boys should be separated from girls ; they should 
not be put to bed with each other, the two sexes together. In 
their presence, persons should be always decently clad. A con- 
stant regard should be had to decency and good manners. 



109 



470. Children should be made to eat together, at regnlar 
hours, and to eat every thing. They should not be allowed at 
table to gape at strangers, and to run, when they leave, to seize 
the fragments of the meal, to eat privily, to snatch up right and 
left whatever strikes their fancy, nor to go begging among the 
neighbors. Finally, gluttony should be prevented by accus- 
toming them to substantial food instead of delicate dishes. 
Alexander the Great relates of himself that his tutor, Leonidas, 
used to examine his clothes, his bed, his caskets, with great 
care, from fear that his too indulgent mother, Olympias, had 
secretly stowed away in them some delicate viands. History 
adds that he was long subject to the influence of this education, 
and that when he traversed Asia, if fruit, rare fishes, or other 
edibles were presented him, he shared them with his friends, 
and preserved hardly anything for himself. 

471. Parents have every thing to do to make children con- 
form to the rules of duty. In order that their commands and 
prohibitions may deserve to be listened to, and their observance 
may be secured, they must be just, that is, define with precision 
the things to be done and to be omitted (35), must be enjoined 
persuasively, calmly, and with authority and dignity, without 
anger, ill-temper, haughtiness, oaths, or severity. Reproaches, 
warnings, reprimands, (354), counsel, advice, should be espe- 
cially marked with the impress of goodness. The rod should 
not be appealed to except in extreme cases, after all means of 
persuasion, privation, and the like, have been exhausted. Cud- 
geling and pummeling, are applications repulsive to a people's 
civilization. 

472. Demand a prompt, complete, and cheerful obedience 
from your child. If he is indocile, unsubmissive, refractory, 
restive, recalcitrant, if he does not acquiesce, does not yield to 
command, if he answers back, contradicts, murmurs, is unruly, 
subdue his resistance with the weight of your authority, your 
firmness and your decision. 

473. Let him ask favors politely of all in the house, and let 
him express his thanks when his requests are granted. If from 
the cradle he is accustomed to ask angrily and urgently, refuse 
him. When he has grown cool again, you can even anticipate 
it. These are the very words of Seneca : Quod irato et flenti 
negatum fuerit^ offeratur quieto, (That which is denied to an 
angry and weeping petitioner, may be granted to him when 
composed.) 

474. Prevent him assuming imperious and haughty airs with 
the domestics, the servants of the house, or strangers who are 
present. Accustom him early to labor, to be always busy in 



110 



some useful employment; let his work be adapted to his 
strength, and such as to develop it. Instruct him in the affairs 
of the house, making him share in the duties and cares of the 
family. Do not imitate those who keep every thing under lock 
and key for children, giving them no knowledge or enjoyment, 
making them spies, constantly on the outlook for mountains of 
gold, and so greedy as to be always inclined to take the money 
which chance may place within their reach. Aid to yonr 
utmost teachers and the priest, never censuring them, and 
speaking of them only in respectful terms in the presence of 
your children. 

475. Establish subordination between the oldest and young- 
est, and harmony and good order among them all. Train them 
to love and respect one another, to be polite, and not to thee- 
and-thou one another. Do not let them run about by night, to 
listen at doors and windows, to sing in the streets, to hang 
about inns. Be watchful over all their conduct, and over the 
company they keep. Give them good example. Like father 
like son." Cherish in them virtuous inclinations, and oppose 
to the last their evil inclinations, particularly when they first 
manifest themselves, for "Just as the twig is bent, the tree's 
inclined." Those who flatter their caprices, neglect their faults, 
through want of a vigorous guidance in all the windings of 
the path of virtue, will soon have as the result (a thing which 
particularly happens to the indulgent parents of an only child), 
spoiled children, that will sooner or later rush to their ruin, 
crucifying those who have so feebly directed them. 

476. Infanticide! the fruit of libertinism. Sequestration, un- 
common crime. 

477. Parents should procure for their children the necessaries 
of life. It is for them they labor, sometimes day and night. 
For them is it that they dare not take repose, often even in old 
age. They ought to give them good and wholesome food, 
clothe them according to their social standing, but always 
neatly, decently, avoiding extravagance and display. 

478. It is not praiseworthy in parents to dispossess them- 
selves entirely of their property, because generally filial piety 
is not so sure a guaranty of a return on the part of the child as 
is paternal love of original acts of kindness in the parents. The 
extreme opposite of this is the action of certain avaricious 
fathers, who retain great fortunes in their hands to the end, 
leaving the families of their children in an embarrassed situa- 
tion. To defraud, and disinherit them is a rare crime. 

479. Finally, they ought, when they are destitute of fortune, 
to put them in a condition to earn their livelihood, by teaching 



Ill 



them a profession, initiating them early in their own, and if it 
is a manual trade, inspiring them with a taste for it, and fitting 
them for it hy gymnastics, and Tvhatever in the schools is estab- 
lished for physical education. When the child, by tlie devel- 
opment of the activities and faculties he has received, is capaWe 
of fulfilling his duties toward himself, and satisfying his wants, 
of flying, as the saying is, on his own wings, then the authors 
of his being are released from their active obligations toward 
him. Thus the hen ceases to cluck anxiously about her chick- 
ens, to scratch the ground for the barley-grain and worm for 
them, to brood them under her wings, and warm them in her 
down, to protect them against enemies and danger, as soon as 
their strength and instinct allow them to provide for themselves, 
and dispense with her. 

480. The scandal of children who fall out and quarrel with 
one another, and commence law- suits, and cherish perpetual 
enmity against one another for the distribution of the inherit- 
ance left them by their parents, is frequent. Parents may pre- 
vent this, by regulating the partition of the inheritance before 
their decease, so that upon that event, the former may find 
themselves, without any step or effort on their own part, in full 
possession of their respective portions. 

CHILD AND PAEENTS. 

481. The active duties of the child towards its parents are 
the duties of gratitude for the pure goodness they have mani- 
fested, duties of justice and gratitude for the pains and sacrifices 
they have imposed upon themselves, and for which they expect 
indemnification in kindness returned. They are duties owed 
it by filial piety. 

SOME APPLICATIONS ON THE DUTIES OF THE CHILD TO ITS 
PARENTS. 

482. Who is more worthy of our respect, of our affection, 
of our tender regard, than the authors of our being? The 
child will examine into the wants of his parents, will watch 
constantly over their w^elfare, will anticipate their wishes, will 
never forget them in life or death. He will severely condemn 
him who, yielding to the most ridiculous and foolish pride, should 
despise and deny his father and mother, should be ashamed of his 
origin, because education and fortune may have raised him to a 
higher position, and who should be so unjust as not to recognize 
the extent to which they have contributed to his elevation. 
The crimes of our parents may make us blush for them, but 
never their poverty or their ignorance. He will regard with 



112 



horror the monsters who desire the death of their parents in 
order the sooner to enjoy their property. 

483. A well-bred child does not allow himself to he dis- 
respectful, sulky, or unduly familiar to his parents. He em- 
braces them upon leaving them and on his return, greets them 
upon rising, and on retiring to bed, is frank in his conversation 
with them, never lies nor denies his faults, is astonished to find 
certain households in which brothers, sisters, and mother, in 
their communications with each other, will in the midst of the 
most cheerful conversation, be abashed and silent upon the 
sudden appearance of the father ; households in which children 
designate their parents only by the pronouns he and she^ and 
are unwilling to say : " my father, my mother." 

484. He obeys them because he knows that they prescribe 
for him the duties he is to perform. He assists them with 
eager promptness. He makes request af them with courtesy, 
and receives from them with thanks. 

485. He is seen to console them in affliction, to anticipate 
whatever can give them pleasure, and to bear in mind that it is 
by his good or ill-conduct in particular, that he affects them 
agreeably or otherwise. 

486. The child should take care of his parents in their infir- 
mities, diseases, and old age, by overcoming all the annoyances 
which they have overcome for him. If he is little concerned 
lest they should be mortified by his misconduct, it will be of 
slight importance to him that this mortification affects their 
health ; and who shall guaranty to us that he is not capable of 
raising his hand against them and striking them ? 

487. Parricide! Ought such a word to be found in our 
lexicons ? He who, through mortification and disease brings 
his father or his mother to the grave, is a parricide, ^ot un- 
frequently have the axe and ^the musket been used to perpe- 
trate the death of parents. 

488. The wealth of a family is considered to be the property 
of father and mother. Consequently children that abstract 
portions of it to act the vagabond, to play billiards in coffee- 
houses, scholars who lose their time, return false statements of 
their accounts, and create debts which honor compels their 
parents to pay, sons of farmers who sell bags of wheat for two- 
thirds of their value, those that carry off wine in small quan- 
tities, the children of merchants who do not give up the entire 
price of the articles tliey have sold, commit theft. When the 
resources of a family do not allow its members to live without 
labor, if children do not work to increase them, if they keep 
what they earn, if, as the saying is, each draws to himself, if 



113 



there is not a single purse as there is a single head, the family 
will soon be broken up. 

489. Children should provide the necessaries of life, food, 
clothing, and shelter for their fathers and mothers in their old 
age. But there are children that instead of dividing with their 
parents the last morsel of bread, and all they have, by giving 
them always the first share, in token of respect, do not hesi- 
tate to drive them into a loft, exclude them from company, to 
assign them the lowest place, to eat and drink the best they 
have without them, let them go a-begging, and do not pay their 
debts. What do we say ? There are some who suffer them- 
selves to be cited before the tribunals that they may be com- 
pelled to bestow the allowance of food required by the law, 
and who await with impatience the day of deliverance from 
this burden. 

490. We ought willingly to overlook the failings of our 
parents towards us, for they have suffered and forgiven many 
from us. Frequently children assail their parents by law-suits. 
Hence there arise bitter feelings between them. They refuse 
to see one another, upon every chance meeting turn their backs 
upon each other, avert their faces, or keep at a distance to 
avoid meeting. Finally, children should secure their parents 
the consolations of religion at the approach of their last hour, 
and burial for their mortal remains. 

491. Just as between the father-in-law and mother-in-law, 
on the one hand, and the sons and daughters-in-law, on the 
other, there is but the shadow of the parental relation : so be- 
tween them there is only the shadow of the duties of strict 
justice. But the ties of marriage give to the duties of kind- 
ness great emphasis, convert them into duties of choice which 
may even acquire the hues derived from ties of blood, when 
the affections of the heart are once well-established. (See story 
of Kaomi.) 

492. As to the positive duties between brothers and sisters, 
and the other members of one family, what precedes is suffi- 
cient to determine their character. The moralist has reason to 
complain here of the pride, injustice, and niggardliness of opu- 
lent families that despise the poor families of their lineage, and 
abandon them without pity to destitution, and likewise of the 
rivalries and mortal hatred which generally prevail between 
the houses of the great. 



114 



CIVIL SOCIETY. 

493. Civil societies are the associations that cover the grand 
divisions of the globe under the names of nations, states, king- 
doms, etc., and which bear swaj over others, as rivers prevail 
over small streams and canals. 

494. A duty distributed among five, fifteen, forty, sixty mil- 
lions of minds, and that duty practicable only on the condition 
that the action of all finds expression through a single mind; 
this is the whole secret of political morality. The unity, the 
single person or body, that explores, determines the common 
thing to be done or to be avoided, the common duty, is the 
sovereign, the ruler, the legislative body, the monarch, the 
king, the emperor ; his word which manifests it, and prescribes 
the action, is the law ; the multitudes that listen and act, are 
the subjects, the people. The body of persons representing, and 
occupying the place of the sovereign in order to the enjoining 
of the social duty, constitute with him the government, the 
authority, the civil power. 

Civil law. 



RELATION OF MASTER AND SERVANT. 

495. A man engages to employ his energies for the interest 
of another, and accepts in his service in return lodging, food, 
and wages. This species of contract includes the large body 
of domestics from the farm laborer to the waiters in palaces, 
embracing workmen, clerks, employees of every sort, teachers, 
nurses, etc. The word domestic comes from the Latin domus^ 
a house, because the servant is attached to the house of his 
master by the very nature of his services, and becomes, as it 
were, an additional member of his family. The respective 
duties of master and servant are designated in the stipulations 
of their contract, to which reference must be had. They are 
duties of justice. (307.) 

496. Besides these duties, contiguity and intimacy call out 
between them those of every man toward every man. We will 
instance the most ordinary of them that occur. 

497. Errors in the authority exercised and in the obedience 
rendered. (343.) They are but too numerous : these are orders 
given at random, or with ill-humor, in passion, pride, in insult- 
ing terms, reprimands made in the same spirit. With certain 
people one's duties are never performed. Whatever may be 
the servant's intelligence, zeal, and submissiveness, she cannot 
gain the confidence of her mistress, who is angry with her from 
morning till night. To order any one to do a thing beyond his 



115 



strength, is cruelty. What shall be said of certain masters who 
have been known to dare even to whip tlieir domestics ? Obe- 
dience : not being prompt, thorough, and cheerful. 

498. Domestic. Animosity, hatred on account of just re- 
proof. Impudence, and failure of respect, of attachment, of 
consideration and interest for the master ; insensibility to his 
happiness and his misfortunes. Curiosity impelling one to spy 
out his secrets. Not studying his duties, and allowing himself 
to be specially ordered about every thiug. Not watching over 
the interests of the master. Failing in personal neatness and 
decent behavior. Being too bold, too familiar. Slandering. 
Being indiscreet. Fawning about the master to gain the first 
place in his favor. Making false or imprudent reports in order 
to prejudice another domestic in his estimation. The servants 
in the great commercial houses, or in others, failing in courtesy 
toward one another, playing the spy upon each other, indulging 
in intrigues against those who are above them in service, quar- 
reling and coming to blows. Using filthy and indecent lan- 
guage in the presence of the children of the house ; teaching 
them to do mischief. Being too condescending and servile 
towards those of the great, concealing from their parents their 
grave faults. 

499. Eemonstrances against the faults of the master, ofi'ered 
*with respect, are not forbidden to domestics. Let them be- 
ware of aiding him in the performance of any crime? Let them 
resist him with energy and dignity, if he dares to exert his 
supremacy to impel them to violate any duties whatever. For 
a domestic, an employee, to have illicit intercourse with the 
daughter of his master, or his wife, or a servant maid with a 
master, or his sons. How many households have not such dis- 
orders ruined or disturbed ! 

500. A servant steals from his master in appropriating to 
himself certain savings, certain profits, because he has caused 
them, by gluttonously consuming beyond his wants, by giving 
provisions to friends and lovers, during the absence of the heads 
of the family, and by causing them to be secretly sent to rela- 
tives and acquaintances, without speaking of direct abstrac- 
tions. All these things imply the aggravating circumstance of 
abuse of confidence, make him an intestine enemy, a serpent in 
disguise, and are many of them, in the civil laws, the object of 
a special penalty. 

501. The master. He is inclined by his position to pride, to 
contempt toward his domestics, to believe them of an inferior 
nature, and hence to regard them but too highly honored, but too 
happy to be in his service ; to consider himself as not obliged 



i 



116 



to respect them, quite as much at least as the chance-comers 
who pass before him in the street ; as not obliged to be kind to 
them, to be grateful for their fidelity, which is sometimes so 
touching. We cannot too strongly avoid these tendencies to 
oppression in our evil nature, toward those who depend upon 
us, when history shows us that they have engendered slavery 
and all manner of tyranny. 

502. When any object of value has disappeared from the 
house, suspecting the domestic immediately. Make known his 
faults, without considering that he will thus be prevented find- 
ing a new situation. Humiliating him, insulting him on occa- 
sion of his slightest faults. Causing him no satisfaction ; deny- 
ing him the honorable and healthful amusements which he 
needs. Endeavoring by a cold and harsh demeanor to keep 
him in trouble and constraint. Venting on the poor domestic 
the ill-will with which one is filled. 

503. The maladies which are manifestly caused by labor are 
a charge upon the master. Humanity imposes upon him the 
care of maladies purely accidental, when the domestic has no 
asylum. 

504. Not suspecting that every moral duty in domestics, 
other than that of which he is the object, may have reference 
to him, aud entirely disregarding the numerous means he has 
of influencing their actions, instruction, oversight, reproofs* 
punishments, etc. 

505. In the suburbs of Wieden, in Vienna (Austria), died at 
the age of 116 years, a maid-servant named Elizabeth Ernestine 
Thaler, who from her eleventh year, that is to say, during 1 05 
years, had served successively and without interruption, three 
generations of one and the same family. ("La Presse," a 
French journal of the sixth of November, 1838). Ernestine, you 
had very good masters, since you were so good a domestic. 

506. It is incompatible with the dignity of the head of a 
great industrial or commercial establishment, as well as with 
that of his workmen or employees, to demand that they blindly 
follow his political course ; but in circumstances where such 
nominations to public functions are approved by the general 
voice, as suitable to the wants of the country, he would fail ia 
patriotism in not influencing his subordinates. 



RELATION OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS. 

507. Parents being unable to educate thoroughly by them- 
selves their children, society assumes the task by means of a 
body of educators. Hence arises the school. 



in 



508. The question of public instruction is very hard, being 
this one : Among a million books existing in the world, what 
little volumes are to furnish the little pockets of the child, and 
its still smaller brain ? The solution of it issues from our work 
like the stream from its source. 

509. The light to be cast into the opaque soul of the children, 
who, occupying to-day the benches of the school, to-morrow 
will fill the ranks of society, is most assuredly that of their 
interests. The sum of our interests consists in the sum of our 
duties (which bear, as one has seen, upon the sum of our good 
and our evil), and to fulfill these latter is to secure the former. 
The child is disciplined in this light in the practice of duty. 
This is what instruction should be which establishes good 
morals — 150. 

510. 1. The general theory of duty^ and first branch of 
general morality set forth in this book, forming the man as an 
individual, as a member of humanity, of the family, and domes- 
tic life. 

511. 2. Eeligion, 43, 45, 571. 

512. 3. Logic^ which completes the play of the intellectual 
faculties, 170. 

513. "4. Medicine^ in a cataloge of 200 maladies as far as it 
is accessible and practicable for every one, under the name of 
hygiene, 182. 

514. 5. Gymnastics^ to develop, render flexible and strengthen 
the activity of the body in its habitual movements, and in such 
practical movements as are requisite in the industrial arts, 189. 
Dancing, swimming, horsemanship, fencing. 

515. 6. Music, 200. 

516. 7. Lcmguage (grammar, reading, literature, rhetoric 
and poetry, being included under that head), in harmony with 
the wants of every country, 200, 201, 202. 

517. 8. 6'<?mwdree,includingbook-keeping, 220, 221,228, 312. 

518. 9. Three hundred industrial arts, so far as they are of 
general necessity, writing, drawing, particularly linear draw- 
ing, sewing, knitting, domestic economy, agriculture, and for 
all others practised by society in the diversity of interests. 

619. 10, A lody of statistics, which would call out indus- 
trial avocations, would make us understand how we acquire the 
multitude of objects of which we make use, how absolute is 
our dependence upon one another, and how we are made to 
live in society ; would inspire the best and the most equitable 
social arrangement for their production, with the spirit of care 
and preservation for the fruit of so many pains and exertions ; 
would be the nursery of apprenticeships, and an occasion for 



118 



rendering manual labor honorable and the workman respect- 
able, 219. 

520. 11. Folitics, without which there are no real citizens, 493. 

521. 12. Among seventy-two sciences, those which are inti- 
mately allied with morality, as metaphysics^ mathematics^ 
natural history^ geometry^ history^ physics^ chemistry ^ astrono- 
my^ geology^ 148. 

522. Let all these subjects be comprised in as many small 
volumes ; let them be thoroughly analyzed, and let the volumes 
be the same for all the schools of the country for the sake of 
unity, in order that one book may serve the successive mem- 
bers of a family, the teachers and the pupils when they change 
schools. The books upon the same subjects will serve as com- 
plements to each other for comparison and consultation. Let 
them be in every household forever as the germ of civilization 
of the world, the sacred fountain-head of the happiness of 
mankind. Let every human being, man and woman, all their 
lives, go to them to refresh mind, and heart, and their activity. 

523. The plan of instruction may be divided, if desired, into 
primary and secondary grades, etc. 

524. In this important matter we have only responded to the 
^maxim of Socrates : Know thyself. — Pedagogy. 

SKETOri OF THE FAULTS TO WHICH SCHOLARS ARE SUBJECT. 

525. Not to set that value upon instruction which it deserves. 
To be ungrateful and disrespectful towards the master, and not 
perceive that what is given him is far below what is received 
from him. Looking upon him as a tyrant, and making false 
reports to the parents, to prejudice them and render them un- 
friendly to him. Disclose the secrets of the school. 

526. Answering without being questioned. Being heedless 
and inattentive to the lesson. Coming too late, whispering, 
laughing, standing or sitting in a bad posture in the class. 
Muttering while learning lessons. Shaking, straddling, and 
swinging the legs. Rubbing boots and shoes on the floor. 
Moving and jarring the tables and benches ; jumping and run- 
ning upon them. Cutting, scratching, and carving them. 
Writing on the walls, and blackening them. Dancing and 
whirling about in school. Crawling under the tables. Throw- 
ing parings, the stones and cores of fruits, and bits of bread 
under them. Crawling about the benches, and tearing their 
clothes; staining them with ink. 

527. Whispering answers in the lesson to the next pupil. 
Beating a tattoo with the fingers or a pen. Catching flies. 
Tearing their books. Slyly reading their lessons or tasks; get. 



I 

i 



119 

ting tliem done by others, or engaging in them idly or listlessly. 
Pinching those who sit next. Going out without leave. Break- 
ing the glass in the school-house through heedlessness. Defac- 
ing books; letting them fall. Scuffling, collaring, wrangling, 
and bickering with one another. Knocking and beating one 
another. Having no respect for one another. Shouting in the 
grounds and in the streets, or in the walks. Playing and run- 
ning too eagerly, at the hazard of being hurt against a corner. 
Entering the class on a run, and going out in the same way, in 
a disorderly manner. 

Assuming immodest airs in the streets. Playing truant. The 
larger and more advanced scholars despising the younger and 
the beginners ; the rich despising the poor, and reproaching 
them with their poverty. Playing with knives. Denying their 
faults. Being liars, cheats, spies, tell-tales, concealing the serious 
misdeeds of companions. Throwing about books, bits of paper, 
hats and caps. Throwing stones at one another, gravel, mud, 
and snow-balls. Throwing stones into gardens, neighboring 
yards, at passers-by, at cats and dogs. Teasing these last to 
fight. Playing for money. Making sport of the unfortunate, 
of the deformed, and maimed. Insulting strangers in presence 
of the school, or institute. Going with hands and face un- 
washed, and hair uncombed. Keeping writing materials filthily. 
Not preserving them. Giving each other nick-names. 

528. Punning and roaming about every part of the town, or 
village, in the rear of yards and orchards. Looking after fruit 
hanging from the branches of trees. Sitting at the foot of 
trees, waiting for fruit to fall, or knocking it oflT with stones. 
Getting away the bread, apples, or cakes of a fellow-pupil. 
Selling one's books, pens, or pencils, etc. Asking any 
one tacitly for dainties. Punning after carriages, and clinging 
on behind them. Gathering in groups and fighting with stones, 
at the risk of blacking and putting out each other's eyes and 
wounding one another. Gazing steadily at strangers who visit 
the school ; at pupils who are called up. To be disturbed in 
one's task at sight of a mouse or any other trifle. Many hur- 
rying at once to do some slight service to the master. 

529. In boarding-schools leaving clothes topsy-turvy, huddled 
together in the trunk ; forming intimate friendships ; having a 
dish, or some special service different from that of one's fellow- 
pupils ; dropping one's bread ; seizing upon the food, and quar- 
reling about it. Taking the fruit of a house or of some estate, 
where some friend of the principal has permitted a visit; 
whistling, singing in the yards, dormitories, and halls, and con- 
versing in too high a key. After making a present to the teach- 



120 



ers, requesting a relaxation of discipline and special favors in 
consequence. Being laggard in the diflferent exercises of the 
establishment. When taking a walk, hopping and skipping, 
kicking stones with the feet, separating from one another, leav- 
ing the master and going out of his sight. Having a disorderly- 
longing for the holidays, and noting their approach day after 
day upon calendars. Leaving the boarding-school in small 
companies and coming back again in the same way. 

530. In the train of the armies of ]N"apoleon, whicli over- 
threw the thrones of Europe, were schools for the sons of 
military men. Instruction was given in camp as in the barrack. 
Then tables were set in the open air. Occasionally one of these 
tables was hit by a ball, and many young people slain. The 
rest would not raise their heads to see what had happened. 



OUR DUTIES TOWARD INFERIOR 
BEINGS. 

531. Our duties toward inanimate nature have been already 
sufiBciently explained. It remains for us to speak of those 
toward animals. They are similar to those toward men. 

532. 1. Animals are intelligences, which is susceptible of 
proof. Therefore — 

533. 2. In doing evil, destroying the good, etc., as regards 
animals, we should accustom ourselves to act in the same way 
toward our fellows. A royal prince was condemned to death 
at Lacedemone, because it had been discovered that he took 
pleasure in catching birds and putting out their eyes, and let- 
ting them fly. *'For," said the Lacedemonians, '*what should 
we not have to dread from this man, when he shall have be- 
come our master, if in his tenderest youth he is capable of such 
cruelty ?" 

534. 3. Animals themselves have a sense of duty," says 
Seneca. They perform it toward men. The dog loves his 
master, and will defend him at the peril of his life. The most 
terrible animals are susceptible of gratitude. [The Lion of 
Androcles. The Dolphin and Child. The Serpent and Thoas. 
(Selectmeprofanis, lib. 3, cap. 17.) The Lioness of Maldonetta.] 
The Lions and Tigers of the Garden of Plants, at Paris, are wont 
to caress their keepers. It is because he sees that he ought 
not to wound you, that the ox moves out of your way in the 
street. When little children hold out a piece of bread to a mastiff, 
with what admirable delicacy his long teeth take it from their 
little fingers ! If animals do any damage to the rights of man, 
it is because they are driven by some necessity. The argu- 



121 



ments used under previous heads, 270 and 272, will here take 
this form : We ought not to do to animals what they do not to 
us, and do to them what they do to us. 

530. 4.«ftLnimals may be our property. Hence their good is 
our good, their evil ours. 

537. Animals possess feeling. They are sensible to hunger, 
thirst, heat, cold, friendship hatred, joy, sorrow, horror, anger, 
fear, etc. We tame them, make them familiar with us, domesticate 
them. They exert over their sensibility a powerful influence. 

538. They have understanding. The moral sense in them is 
called instinct. Animals observe, believe, will ; but all this is 
very imperfect. However, the perception of sounds, odor, and 
material objects by the eye and touch, is in a great number 
much more prompt and snbtile than in us. 

239. The internal conformation, and external configuration 
of the body of the brute, belongs to zoology. Zoology restricted 
to domestic animals, the means of raising and rearing them, of 
preventing and curing their maladies, constitute veterinary art. 

540. He who does not wish or cannot take suitable care of 
animals should not keep them. To beat cattle severely, to tear 
their flesh, or to overdrive them, is a barbarism so common that 
in certain countries, particularly in England, special laws have 
been enacted to prevent it. " Yesterday," says " La Presse " of 
December 22d, 1838, " a cart loaded with carpenter's wood, 
was crossing the street Croix-des-Petites-Champs (at Paris), 
drawn by a single horse ; the poor animal sinking under the 
weight of his load, was obliged to stop ; but the driver beat 
him with so much violence that his legs began to give way. 
The driver then flew into a rage, took the head of the horse in 
his hands and bit him on the lips with all his strength. Two 
police officers passing at the time, interfered, and put an end to 
such brutalities." 

541. The comparison of the physical strength of animals with 
that of man presents curious results. We develop, subdue, con- 
trol, break and regulate it. We train animals to certain tricks, 
manoeuvres, and labor. A great number have voices. We 
can, up to a certain point, compel them to do duty, to observe 
moral rules. 

542. The conversion to our use of the activity, of the free- 
dom of animals, has not the same consequences as in man. The 
condition of brutes subdued to the yoke, performing moderate 
toil, measured by their strength, is no worse than before. Their 
physical power is an unemployed treasure of which men make 
use. The same is true of what they produce : the sheep does 



122 



not need its fleece, the chicken its eggs, the bee its honey and 
wax, the silk-worm its thread, the cow her milk. 

643. We should destroy hurtful animals unsparingly. "We 
could scarcely live without the substance of animaSr There 
are two existences which are incompatible. The noblest wins the 
day; the animal must be sacrificed to the wants of man. For 
this end the slaughter of animals without pain, is not immoral. 

644. The conduct of children that destroy nests, break the 
eggs of birds, and tread the young underfoot, is wicked. The 
destruction of birds is contrary to the interests of agriculture, 
and deprives the country of one of its sources of pleasure. 

Falconry — Fishing — Halieutics — Yenery. 

AFTEE A FAULT. 

545. When we have failed, or violated a duty, a system of 
obligations, when we have wallowed in the mire of crime, when 
we have grown corrupt in it, when we have become attached 
to it and hardened in it, we should return into ourselves, admit 
and confess our faults, condemn them, deplore them, by being 
sorry, repentant, grieved, by bewailing them, putting them 
from us, by chastening, correcting, transforming, improving 
ourselves, by removing, effacing, and expiating them, by cleans- 
ing, purifying, and purging ourselves of them. 

GENEEAL MEANS TO THE PEEFOEMANCE OF OUE DUTIES. 

546. 1. Knowing our duties — duties unknown cannot be per- 
formed — and in order to know them, we must continually study 
and investigate them. The earth is full of wretchedness because 
nobody reflects. Cultivating the moral sense, in order to be 
safe from the prejudices, which cause evil to be taken for good, 
a violation of duty for duty, fatal error whose fruits we see in 
savages who eat human flesh, and among the former tribes of 
Barbary, which regarded acts of piracy as valiant deeds, and 
thus made trophies of their robber spoils, and nations which in 
ancient times, and in our own day, have had the hardihood to 
recognize slavery as a permanent element of society. Loving 
the beautiful and virtuous, abhorring the ugly and vicious. 
Cherishing, cultivating in the heart a susceptibility for the sen- 
timents favorable to virtue, such as honor, iplory, candor, 
modesty, bashfulness, naivety, shame, remorse, dishonor, 
offense, affront, repugnance and trouble which nature itself 
attaches to crime. 

547. 2. We are powerfully inclined to the violation of our nega- 
tive duties, and diverted from our positive obligations by pas- 
sions, our likings, inclinations, tendencies, and propensities ; we 



123 

must rebuke them, combat them incessantly, shake oil their 
joke, mortify them, repress, control, bridle, assail, conquer, 
uproot, subdue, command, triumph over them; on the thou- 
sands of occasions called dangers, temptations, scandals, haz- 
ards ; in the idleness which the proverb says is the mother of 
all the vices ; we must avoid them, guard against them, flee 
from them, shun them, overcome them. 

648. 3. Developing our active energies. The more easy is 
action for us, the less irksome to us is the performance of active 
duties. 

549. 4. The affections, convictions, beliefs, dispositions of men 
with whom we are brought in contact pass into our minds, the 
good ones, as heat from a fire, pervades our sensations, and the 
bad, as a pestilential air, penetrates our pores, as decay in a 
fruit seizes upon that which is in contact with it. Their con- 
duct stimulates ours. Direct invitations, suggestions, incite- 
ments, aid the force of example. Tell me whose society you 
seek, and I will tell you what you are. We become vulgar by 
associating with the rabble, as we profit by intercourse with 
good people. We should then frequent the society of the latter, 
and shun immoral associations, pot-houses and stews. Books 
produce the same results as persons. 

550. 5. The repetition and reiteration of the same acts gives 
ease to the play of our faculties, as use makes smooth the play 
of a machine. Active and inveterate habits diminish free will, 
engender necessity, and become a second nature. Thus the 
habit of performing positive duties, renders them light to us, the 
habit of violating negative duties makes the violation impera- 
tive. What so formidable as habit in the drunkard, in the 
thief, and the libertine ! Wheels that have been long unused, 
contract rust. The fixed habit of continence and self-restraint 
in presence of negative duties, is opposed to their violation. 
The habit of being inert in presence of active duties, is opposed 
to the performance of them. 

551. Thus cultivated and grown to maturity, with all obsta- 
cles and trammels under its feet, like the captive's broken chain, 
like the sundered moorings of a ship, or the impatient air-bal- 
loon, the active principle, if preceded by the immovable will to 
fulfill its duty, wherever it may be seen, faithful to the voice of 
conscience, to its destiny, will advance giant strides over the 
paths of morality, straight forward, like the soaring ventolier. 

552. 6. Finally, one means of itself highly efficient, infallible 
and omnipotent over minds endowed with the smallest particle 
of common sense, is to consider, not to lose sight of the conse- 
quences of the violation of duties, the sanction of the moral 



124 



law. The sanction of law is a solid dike against the violation 
of law. 

553. We have considered special cases ; but here follow more 
common denominations of the infractions, transgressions, dis- 
regards of duty : Abominations, abuse, assault, blunder, fall, 
contravention, crime, delinquency, disorder, deviation, error, 
affray, prank, scandal, escapade, excess, fault, offense, frolic, 
indecorum, iniquity, pecadillo, unseemliness, prevarication, 
oversight, injury, misdemeanor, whimsy, turpitude. 

554. The performance of our duties toward ourselves carries 
in itself its remuneration, its own recompense. 

555. The violation of our duties to ourselves is its own pun- 
ishment, its own chastisement. 

556. There is a recompense in the honorable epithets which 
a regard for the moral laws bestows upon us, some of which 
have been set forth in the course of this work, and others 
follow. 

557. There is a punishment in the injurious epithets, perma- 
nent, indelible which the violation of the moral laws brings 
upon us, which we have already seen, and which also fol- 
low. 

558. When the performance of duty is accompanied with any 
danger or difficulties that may be overcome, he who confronts 
them is called valiant, valorous, gallant, bold, brave, intrepid, 
magnanimous, a hero. 

559. When the performance of a duty is attended with dan- 
gers or difficulties that may be overcome, he who yields, bends, 
flags, sinks, retires before them, is said to be without heart, 
cowardly, craven, chicken-hearted, fainthearted, white-livered, 
a poltroon, and a dastard. 

560. He who performs a duty with promptness, zeal, energy, 
and dispatch, is precise, diligent, strict, rigid, and austere. 

561. He who hesitates, draws back, halts, temporises in the 
performance of a duty, or omits it through sloth, indolence, 
carelessness, indifference, is called negligent, heedless, supine, 
listless, sluggard, slothful, lazy, idle, dronish, truant. 

562. The sum of duties performed. A man who is civilized, 
conscientious, disciplined, discreet, just, moderate, moral, 
refined, pure, sedate, reserved, honorable, virtuous. Good and 
true men. A Cato. A Stoic. The worthy. An exemplary 
person. A good worker. 

563. The sum, or an important part of duties violated, the 
disposition to such violation. A man who is corrupt, de- 
bauched, demoralized, depraved, loose, undisciplined, profligate, 
dissolute, immoral, impure, uncivilized, licentious, perverse, 



125 



wayward, vicious, cynical, satanical. A libertine. A scape- 
grace. A wretch. An unprincipled, faithless, lawless man. 
A ruffian. A scamp. A scoundrel. A wild fellow, a rake, a 
hang-dog. Tomboy. Desperado. 

264. The performance as well as the violation of duties is 
implied in the words, manners and conduct. Conduct irrepre- 
hensible, irreproachable, spotless, proper, lawful, consistent, 
rational, orderly, regular. 

565. Conduct inconsistent, disorderly, improper, unlawful, 
unreasonable, mean, unworthy, irregular, reprehensible. 

566. Yes, virtue graces, adorns, exalts us, gives us reputa- 
tion, renown, and distinction, perfects, dignifies, ennobles us. 
It creates merit, encourages the finest sentiments, honor, glory, 
calmness, serenity, peace, confidence. Under its powerful egis 
worthy men move forward undauntedly ; in their superhuman 
energy, they brave calumny and the corrupting headsman; 
though the heavens fall, they are not alarmed. Innocence is a 
crown the ornaments of which are pearls and diamonds, from 
which hang wreaths of roses and odoriferous perfumes. 

567. Yes, guilt humbles, lowers, degrades, debases, disfigures, 
soils, stains, obscures, discredits, disgraces and dishonors us. 
It engenders demerit, ignominy, reproach, infamy, bitter re- 
morse, sorrow, shame and confusion which redden the cheek, 
and the undying worm. Finally, in its inmost being, the guilty 
soul is poisoned, stung, tortured by the bare thought, the 
simple remembrance of its misconduct, even when it has naught 
to fear from any living being. Its falsities form about it an 
escort that never deserts it, a train of adders and toads, of 
vipers and scorpions, of putrid corpses, of fleshless skeletons, of 
frightful spectres. 

To the natural sanction is added that which comes from 
other intelligences. 

SANCTION FROM INDIVIDUAL PAETIES. 

568. He who performs his duties is respected, loved, es- 
teemed, praised, venerated, welcomed, favored by other men, 
because he is amiable, respectable, praiseworthy, estimable, 
venerable, commendable. They press to his assistance in his 
needs. The manner in which he conducts himself toward them 
gives him ground to count on their kind offices. They will 
return him attachment for attachment, courtesy for courtesy. 
Save a man from the water, he will save you from the fire. 
Return to a traveler his valise or his portfolio, he will present 
you with a portion of its contents. A young beggar discloses 
to a czar that the dishes served up to him are poisoned : the 



i 



126 



Russian emperor raakes him the prince Menzikoff. Even ani- 
mals recognize their benefactors, as the anecdotes prove, to 
which we have referred before. Virtue, in a word, has over 
other intelligences a talismanic influence. 

569. Men detest, execrate, blame, despise, condemn him who 
disregards his duties, because he is unamiable, detestable, 
blameworthy, contemptible, and execrable. They keep aloof 
from him, refuse him their services, of which he is unworthy, 
and abandon him. They especially expect from him a violation 
of his duties toward them. They will return him coldness for 
coldness, hatred for hatred, disdain for disdain. "When he takes 
measures to arrest, maltreat, rob, and assassinate them, they 
will baffle his plans, will prevent, repulse, supplant, and thwart 
him with conflict and ruin. If he consummates a destruction 
of good, a creation of evil, they will take from him reparation, 
satisfaction, vengeance, they or their relatives and friends, or 
even their animals. Brutes, on their turn, avenge themselves 
when maltreated. In a word, he who is tainted with crime, 
whatever perfection and excellence he may have beside, is in- 
continently changed, for other intelligences, into an object of 
aversion and abhorrence, an insupportable image. 

SAXCTIOX ox THE PART OF COMMUNITIES. 

570. The father punishes the mother. The mother punishes 
the father. The father and mother correct and chastise the 
children. Children punish father and mother. The master 
punishes the intractable pupil. The pupil leaves the negligent 
or ignorant master. Civil society has a police which is on the 
watch for crime, which makes bodily seizures of the crim- 
inal, judges who condemn him, jailors, headsmen, executioners 
to inflict suffering upon him, and to exterminate him. Keep, 
then, constantly before your mind the penal laws of your coun- 
try ; read and re-read them ; for if you infringe them, woe to 
you, trice and four times woe! Citizens punish the hostile 
ruler, the perjured king. The sovereign punishes unfaithful 
subjects, ^rations take vengeance on nations that have injured 
them. In these great conflicts, calamity, calamity ! 

SANCTION ON THE PART OF THE DEITY. 

571. Our duties towards beings of the supernatural order, 
many of our duties towards ourselves and towards other men, 
have been formulated in the word of God, who has attached 
rewards to their performance, and penalties to their infraction. 
Eeligion will bring them to your knowledge. 



OBSERVATIONS. 

572. The rewards which we grant to the performance of duty 
should be proportionate to the importance of those same duties, 
and should fall below them. 

573. The penalties which other intelligences inflict upon him 
who is the subject of a violation of duty, have for their object 
to prevent the recurrence of that violation, as by means of 
menace, they attempt to prevent it. We cannot dispense them 
indiscriminately. They demand, in order to be moral acts, to 
be measured by a criterion, the elements of which we find in 
our principles themselves. 

574. Every violation of duty may be summed up in the ren- 
dering some one as guilty of the non-existence of good, or of 
the existence of evil. The violation of a duty to be prevented 
is either of the guilty party towards himself, or towards a third 
person, or towards him who inflicts punishment. 

575. Case first. Let the result of the fault be a non-good. 
If it is punished by the deprivation of a good which one has de- 
stroyed or not created, or of which he has prevented the crea- 
tion, or not prevented the destruction, the second good must 
be inferior to the first, according to the proposition, Between 
two things good, we should choose the better." I desire to 
burn forty volumes of my library. Will it be reasonable in 
you to hinder my doing it, to throw fifty into the fire ? It will 
be said that by so doing, you are more culpable than I. Sup- 
pose the fault is punished by an evil. If it is punished by an 
evil created or not destroyed, or hindered from being destroyed, 
or not hindered from being created, it is plain that the entity of 
the evil thing should be far below the entity of the good, in 
order that the latter may not be decidedly diminished, and that 
it may still pass for a good, and in order that punishment may 
still be an act of goodness. 

576. Let the result of the fault be an evil. If it is punished 
by a deprivation of good, the good should fall below the evil 
and be covered by it. If it is punished by an evil, the second 
should be inferior to the first, according to the proposition, 

Between two evils, we should choose the less." If the evils 
were equal, nothing would be accomplislied. The second being 
superior to the first, the remedy would be worse than the ill. 

577. Case second. The good and evil made use of to punish 
may be equal to the good and evil punished. The precepts 
before cited, still apply : for, evils and good that are equal in 
two persons, cease to be so, when one becomes the guilty party, 
and the other his victim. 

578- Case third. The same rules still apply, but the equality 



128 



(laying out of view inferiority and snperiority) of the good and 
of the evil in the two parties, is understood as we have said in 
reference to the propositions, Between two things good, etc.," 
and still more rigorously. 

579. Punishment again is inflicted in proportion to culpabil- 
ity, of which there are degrees. Full and entire culpability 
demands perfect knowledge of duty, or, at least, the possibility 
of knowing it, with liberty of action in the acting principle, 
and volition. "When a violation of duty occurs without know- 
ledge, inadvertently, undesignedly, by misapprehension, acci- 
dentally, by sudden impulse, it is nothing but a mistake, an 
error, an aberration, a misstep, a surprise, a weakness, a slip, 
is material, in the language of the moralists, not formal. 

580. If relapse is not to be feared, which is to be made ap- 
preciated by the chastisement, penalties are useless and without 
an object. They ought not to be employed till after the re- 
source of exhortations, persuasion, reproaches and menaces 
has been exhausted. The essential end of punishment being to 
secure the performance of duty, it should cease when that is 
obtained. Hence it should be inflicted, as much as possible, by 
means of evils the traces of which it is in our power to re- 
move and efface, and by means of any good which we can re- 
produce, and call to life again.. 

GENEEAL COXCLrSION. 

581. The performjfnce of duty is, then, for us an advantage, 
a good fortune, a prosperity, a joy. 

582. So every violation of duty is for the violator a misfor- 
tune, a mischance, a mishap, a mischief, a reverse, a cross, an 
ill-luck, a tribulation, a detriment, a calamity, a troublesome, 
fatal, unseasonable, fearful, tragical, lamentable affair ; a loss, a 
disaster, a catastrophe, a scourge, an overthrow, a ruin. 

583. If the paths, walks and ways of virtue' are not always 
smooth, wide and strewn with flowers, beneath a clear and 
cloudless sky; if they are sometimes rough, steep, stony, 
rugged, covered with asperities and difficulties, 

584. Those of crime and vice wind among rocks, moving 
sands, whirlpools, glaciers, precipices, gulfs, abysses, pestilential 
marshes, pools and valleys, bristle with thorns and brambles, 
and are covered with the thick night of storms and tempests. 

585. Morality creates for us a happy lot, so far as our frail, 
imperfect, precarious and mortal condition here below allows. 

586. The destiny of the immoral man on earth is an unhappy- 
destiny. The most formidable scenes unroll before the eyes of 
the wicked beyond the tomb — 



129 



687. While to the eye of the good man, who cannot prove 
false to religion, the future unveils a panorama of the perfec- 
tions of human nature, beatitudes that cannot wither, that are 
ineflfable and without end. 



• 



THE END. 



COITTENTS. 



* PAGE 

Letter to the Citizens' Association 3 

iNTEODTJCTIOISr 7 

General Theory of Duty 11 

Duties towards Ourselves — Our Soul — The Heart 22 

Good Sentiments 23 

Evil Sentiments 27 

Activity relative to the Heart: Good and Evil 36 

Understanding : Good and Evil 37 

List of Sciences. 39 

Activity Corresponding to it 40 

Our Body — Passivity: Good and Evil 44 

Diseases 47 

Corporeal Activity: Good and Evil 48 

Sex , 51 

Speech 51 

Partaking of Food 53 

Epithets Applying to the Whole Person 55 

Continnation of our Obligations towards Inanimate iTature. .56 

Nomenclature of Industrial Arts 56 

Means of Obtaining the IsTecessaries of Life 58 

Qualities of Objects that Surround us 61 

Means of Preserving Objects of Value 63 

Duties towards Other Men 67 

The Good and Evil of Our I^'eighbor that lies in us. .67 

The Sentiments, Good and Bad 69 

Activity in their Eeference 71 

Understanding : Good and Evil ; . . 71 

Acts Referring to it, Good and Bad 72 

Passivity of the Body: Good and Bad 75 

Activity of the Body: Good and Bad 75 

Repast: Good and Bad 77 

Speech : Good and Bad .78 

Epithets that originate in the different attitudes, operations, 
situations of our persons to our Neighbors 80 



132 



PAGE 

The Good and Bad of Our Neighbor in his Person and Estate . 82 



His Sensibility 82: 

Activity as it Concerns Sentiments 82, 

His Understanding 82 

His Corporeal Passivity 82'; 

His Corporeal Activity — Slavery 83, 85^ 

Speech — Stomach 85 

Duelling and Murder 86 

"We ought to Yield to our iTeighbor our Superfluous Pro- 
perty 88 

Several Applications of Duties 89, 90, 91 

A Few Epithets Eesulting from our Conduct towards our 

iTeighbor 91 

Of what Consist Honesty and Goodness ;. 92' 

Formulas for Requests 92 

What should he do who has Violated a Duty towards his 

Neighbor? — Restitution and Reparation — Debts 94 

"What he ought to do toward whom a Duty has been Vio- 
lated — Vengeance — Law-Suits 96 

Duties in the Family Relation 101 

Husband and Wife 101 

Parents and Children 106 

Child and Parents Ill 

Civil Society •. . .114 

Relation of Master and Servant. 114 

Relation of Teachers and Pupils 116 

Solution of the Question of Public Instruction 117 

Sketch of the Faults to which Scholars are Subject. .118 

Our Duties toward Inferior Beings 120 

The Animals ... 120 

After a Fault 122 

General Means to the Performance of Our Duties 122 

Natural Sanction of Law 123, 124 

Sanction from Individual Parties 125 

Sanction on the Part of Communities 126 

Sanction on the Part of the Deity .126- 

Observations 127 

General Conclusion 128 



133 



l^Tatiiral Religion is a coniinon ground for the teacher and 
he priest, and the link by which reason and revelation are 
onnected. 

MAN TOWARD GOD. 

God is the being infinite, perfect, and eternal, recognized as 
uch by all the nations of earth, without the idea of which, the 
tupendous order we witness in the universe, the creation and 
•reservation of its elements would be unaccountable, would be 
ifects without a cause. We ought to study and meditate upon 
lim in his nature and his works, in order to know him. We 
Qust believe in him and trust in him. 

He is the Father of mankind, and its benefactor. — We owe 
Lim love, respect, veneration, gratitude, admiration, humility ; 
Lomage, honor, adoration. 

Our will must embrace his interests, and be submissive to his 
rill. Our voice must sing his praise, his grandeur and glory — 
)ray to him and thank him, never blaspheme, nor swear, nor 
ake his name in vain. In our body we owe him the outward 
lemonstrations of worship. The general deportment of our 
)erson ought to be so as not to offend his omnipresence. 

From God our respect extends to his temples, to the person 
)f other worshipers, as well as to their creeds and practices, 
jxcept when they are a manifest outrage to God and humanity. 

If general morality is enforced by the volitions of God (39), in 
5very duty we perform, we must do it in obedience to the will 
)f God, and every neglect of duty involves a disregard, a dis- 
lain of his will. Then it is necessary for us, from time to time, 
,0 throw ourselves into the arms of God and ask him for par- 
Ion, and to expiate our crimes, for fear of his punishments and 
ibandonment. 

GOD TOWARD MAK. 

God is the archetype of the artist, who is proud of and 
glories in the perfection of his work — the fountain-head of the 
jublime devotion of father and mother for their cbildren. This 
ills us with the hope that the present life is but a first stage of 
Dur creation, and that its great end will be obtained by God, 
3ur good, omnipotent and merciful Father— an eternal partici- 
pation of his happiness. 



134 



IMPOETANT EEMAEKS. 

It becomes apparent that in a country where religious tolera- 
tion is a settled principle, the members of the clergy ought to 
act constantly as magistrates of accepted doctrines, avoiding 
irritating controversies. The praying of clergymen in any 
political circumstance ceases to be an anomaly, if he takes 
simply the ordinary character of minister of natural religion ; 
and then, clergymen of different denominations ought not to 
hesitate to meet together, when called upoai, as was the case 
when paying the last tribute of respect to the remains of Mr. 
Lincoln at Union Square. — Our Paragraphs^ 43, 45, 571, 586, 
587. 



EEEATA. 

paragr'h. line. 

Ill 7 Panthophobia, read Pantophobia: 

130 T After dissipate, add ''W 

168 5 Charter, read character. 

182 11 Soliel, read soleil. 

203 Eead line 8th after line 6th. 

220 6 Whth, read with. 

275. ... 2 The neighbor, read our neighbor. 

323 8. . . .In serving, read carving. 



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